


(i saw the crescent) you saw the whole of the moon

by breezered



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: But In Space, F/F, Gay yearning, Space AU, i don't know shit about science but google does, loosely inspired by the martian, mars outpost au, slowburn (i hope), the unsinkable research team
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:26:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29722053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breezered/pseuds/breezered
Summary: The year is 2054. Humanity is looking to establish a foothold on Mars. The Gaia Project research team is comprised of eight young women, all eager to prove themselves and be the first people to spend 100 sols on the Red Planet and begin the process of learning to live in its hostile environment.Of course, nothing is ever straight forward in space.
Relationships: Shelby Goodkind/Toni Shalifoe
Comments: 78
Kudos: 226





	1. sol 1 - 30

**Sol 1**

The landing had gone smoothly. The surface weather on Mars had held clear and even, with low windspeeds and hardly any dust cover. _Coelus_ had set down on the landing site within the acceptable margins, earning their pilot, Leah Rilke, a generous cheer and numerous claps on her back. The next step was getting everyone into their EVA suits and into the HAB.

Toni directed the EVA preparations, watching everyone closely as they walked through the steps they had all been practicing for the two month journey here, and the year leading up to launch. She checked everyone’s suits and then began the slow depressurizing of the airlock.

When the doors opened, everyone gasped at the desolate expanse before them. The HAB was a lump before the horizon, but in every other direction, the red planet stretched out endlessly.

Commander Dorothy Campbell was the first to step out onto the surface.

“Holy shit,” she mumbled, just loud enough for everyone to hear through the comms.

The crew made their way across the surface together. Their steps carried them further than they were used to, the low gravity too tempting to resist putting a little extra jump at the end of each step. Between each crew member, they carried a small cargo bin with the necessary supplies until they could get the Rovers operational and retrieve the rest from the ship.

They reached the HAB, and Dot called them to gather around.

“Okay,” she said, her eyes bright from behind the visor of her helmet, “I know we’re all excited to finally be here, but we have to stick to the plan. Shalifoe, Rilke, Reid – Nora, sorry – you guys are the HAB operations team. We need to get the atmospheric controls running, starting with breathable air. It’s been a year since anyone has been here, so there’s bound to be a few kinks.”

“Don’t worry,” Nora chimed in, “we can handle it."

“Yeah,” Toni said, “can’t be any harder than doing it in SIM with Klein staring at you from behind a two-way mirror.”

Everyone chuckled at that, and the trio departed. Toni and Leah opened the door to the HAB manually, the computerised mechanical functions offline.

It was like walking through a ghost-town. The previous crew had left it in great shape, but there was still a healthy helping of dust on every surface.

“ _Eyes on the HAB_?” Dot’s voice came through the comms.

“Affirmative,” Leah answered. “Just heading to the main computer now.”

Toni wandered through a branching hallway, trailing her gloved hands along the wall as she went. Her feet kicked up dust from the rubber runner on the metal floor. The particles hung, suspended for a moment in the Martian atmosphere.

“Lots of dust,” she commented into her comms, “we’ll have to run a few air cycles before we can unsuit.”

“ _Any eyes on the solar panels?”_ Leah’s voice crackled through the comms.

“ _Reid – fuck, Rachel – and Blackburn are taking a look now_.”

“ _They’re clean_ ,” Martha’s voice was the next to fuzz through the speakers. “ _Connecting HAB to Solars 1 and 2.”_

The solar panels had been collecting and storing solar energy since the last mission had left, disconnected from the HAB so they wouldn’t start wasting energy on powering a base that had no one in it.

The lights flickered to life above Toni. “We’ve got lights! Good job, Marty.”

She retraced her steps back to the central room. It was a round room with a long table in the centre. There was a computer station against one side, three hallways branching off in separate directions, and the door to the airlock they came in through.

Nora was already at the computer, the screens flickering to life as she inserted a data chip. Toni and Leah waited as she swiped over the holo-screens. Slowly, the HAB started coming to life. The smaller screens on the walls lit up with the ISA logo. They could hear the hum of an atmospheric regulator coming online.

“Okay, all systems look operational,” Nora said from her seat at the computer, “I’m going to run the decomp-recomp cycle, and program three air cycles.”

“ _What’s the timing of that looking like?”_ It was Shelby Goodkind, her smooth Texan drawl like sandpaper on Toni’s eardrums. She clenched her jaw.

“Should take just under an hour,” Nora replied. “We’re coming back out.”

Toni and Leah muscled the door open again and the three of them left through the airlock. The doors sealed behind them with the thick hiss of an airtight seal. The rest of the crew was standing a few yards away, the sun glinting off the metallic shells of their EVA suits.

“How’s everyone feeling?” Shelby asked once they reached the group.

“Ship shape,” Leah answered, and Toni had to bite back the snort at the snark in Leah’s tone. “Toni, we should get a start on the rovers.”

They got the ‘okay’ from Dot and bounded off with Shelby’s voice in their ears reminding them to take it easy.

Fatin held up her hand. “Uh, would anyone be down to give a little interview for the vlogs? Let them know we’ve landed, what we’re doing, all that?” When no one volunteered, she pointed at Shelby and smiled. “Shelby, you’re all-American. You’re perfect.”

“No one but the Lord is perfect,” Shelby laughed, her only response being a deafening silence in the comms.

“ _Hey, we’re going silent for a bit,”_ Toni’s voice cuts the quiet, “ _we need to concentrate_.”

“Roger that,” Dot answered, “check in every twenty minutes. Nora will patch you back in when the HAB is ready.”

“ _You got it_.”

Fatin fiddled with the panel on the wrist of her suit, activating the camera that was installed at the front of her helmet.

“Okay,” she said, turning to face Shelby, “let’s get you standing with a nice background.” She gripped Shelby’s shoulders and moved her until her back was to the horizon. “Perfect. So, we just want you to give us a brief rundown on what’s going on, blah blah blah, reassure the people that all is well.”

“All _is_ well,” Dot pointed out.

Fatin ignored her and pointed to Shelby.

“Now?” Shelby cleared her throat and plastered on a big smile, even though the camera was unlikely to pick up any details through the mask of her helmet. “Hey there, Earth! This is Shelby Goodkind speaking to you now from the surface of Mars. It’s pretty crazy, to think we’re all standing here, on the solid ground of another world. Right now, we’re just waiting for the internal atmosphere of the HAB to stabilize and become tolerable for our bodies.”

“How long will that take?” Fatin asked.

“Oh, gosh, I think our mechanics said just under an hour?” Shelby said. Fatin nodded and waved her hand in a ‘go on’ motion. “What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know!” She hissed. “Literally anything, just give me something I can send home.”

Shelby looked around at her crewmates, all staring back at her expectantly through their visors. “Uh, well, as we’re waiting, our two mechanics are starting to work on the Rovers so that we can get the bulk of our supplies out of the ship and into the HAB. We have enough food to last us a week in our reserves,” she pointed at the bins by the airlock door, and Fatin panned her shot over, “but it’s imperative that we get the rest ASAP.”

“This is super boring,” Rachel mumbled.

“Well, maybe _you_ should try it, then,” Shelby defended herself, crossing her arms over her chest.

“People don’t give a shit about food supplies,” Rachel said, “they just want to see cool space things. Like, here, Fatin, put the camera on me.”

“Fiery, I like it,” Fatin teased through the comms as she turned to face Rachel.

“On Mars, gravity is 62% lower than it is on Earth,” Rachel said. “Something that weighs 150lbs on Earth only weighs around 57lbs on Mars.” She bent her knees. “It also means I can jump really high.” Her legs extended and she soared up, up, and then began coming back down in that slow, Martian way.

She held her arms out like a gymnast who stuck the landing.

“Wait, do that again but over here,” Fatin directed, and the two of them bounded past Shelby.

“Tough luck,” Dot mumbled to her, and everyone else chuckled in their microphones.

“That’s alright,” Shelby laughed it off, hiding the little sting of hurt and frustration behind her smile.

“ _Hey, Dot, you there?_ ”

It was Leah’s voice, and everyone stopped what they were doing to listen.

“I hear you, Leah,” Dot answered, “what’s going on?”

“ _There must have been a pretty bad storm_ ,” Leah said, “ _we’ve only got one functional Rover._ Flora _is going to need some serious TLC before she can be any use_.”

“Shit,” Rachel said.

“Copy that,” Dot’s foot started tapping, “what does that mean for supply retrieval?”

Toni spoke next, “ _Not sure. We’re thinking we can try outfitting_ Lares _with bigger lifts, but there’s a risk of him not being able to bear the weight of the load alone._ ”

“What’s the ET on getting _Flora_ back up?”

“ _Could be three days, maybe a week,_ ” Leah answered, some strain in her voice like she was lifting something.

“That’s a pretty big gap in your estimates, Leah,” Nora said. Everyone looked at her. “What? It is.”

“ _Yeah, well_ ,” Leah grunted and then let out a breath, “ _we’re still digging her out, so I can’t be any more specific_.”

“Do you need more hands?” Shelby found herself asking.

“ _Wouldn’t turn them down_.”

“Okay,” Dot looked around at her team and nodded her head as she seemed to consider it, “okay, Reid – _fucking hell_ , why do there have to be two of you? Rachel. Rachel and Martha, go to the Rover Pad and help them out.”

“But Rachel was just about to-,”

Dot cut Fatin off in that no-nonsense tone she had. “No offence, Jadmani, but your vlogs aren’t even my second, third, or fourth concern right now.”

“You didn’t say they weren’t your first.”

Shelby coughed to hide the snicker that tried to rise in her chest. Rachel and Martha started the walk around the HAB to reach the outdoor Rover Pad, their steps kicking up little clouds of dust as they went.

The wait felt interminable, everyone struggling to find the energy to keep up any sort of conversation now that the adrenaline of landing had worn off. Nora’s holo-tablet hovered in front of her as she watched the progress of the HAB’s compression. Shelby and Fatin kicked a rock back and forth, the former keeping a close eye on the suit diagnostics as time ticked ever forward. Overhead, the sun was beginning a slow descent.

Finally, Nora spoke. “Re-comp done; all air cycles completed.”

“Rover Pad, do you copy?” Dot asked into the comms.

“ _Loud and clear,”_ Toni answered, “ _can’t wait to get this suit off_.”

******

_The camera focuses on Toni Shalifoe, dressed in her ISA assigned navy blue t-shirt, sitting at one of the two tables in the rec room._

_From behind the camera, Fatin Jadmani speaks. “Okay, we’re here with Toni Shalifoe in the rec room of the_ Ceres _outpost. Toni, what’s it like now that you’ve spent a couple nights on Mars?”_

 _“Pretty cool,” Toni says, her lips curving into a playful smile, “I definitely don’t miss the shared quarters on_ Coelus _. It’s good to have some privacy again.”_

_“So, tell us what you’re eating,” Fatin says, “because it looks nasty.”_

_Toni grins and pops a piece of brown…something, into her mouth. “It’s just one of the ISA’s staple meals – a brick of nutrition and very little flavour.” The camera pans down and zooms in on her plate. “Insider tip, they’ll let you bring a few personal items with you. Always bring hot sauce. It’s the only thing that makes most of these meals edible.”_

_She dumps some sauce onto the plate and dips a chunk of the nutrition brick in it. The camera pans back out as she licks her fingers clean._

_“Delicious.”_

******

**Sol 5**

Shelby slammed her hand against the door’s open/close button.

“Goddamn it,” she groaned. The door had been sticking for a few days, but Shelby hadn’t thought the problem warranted her submitting a work order for maintenance. She also hadn’t wanted to bother Toni, who for whatever reason, had decided on the first day on the ship that she just didn’t like Shelby.

Now, it looked like _Ceres_ had made the decision for her.

She went to the desk in her quarters and hit the button that would patch her in to Toni’s maintenance frequency.

“ _What?_ ”

Shelby gritted her teeth at the brusque answer. “Hi, Toni. Sorry to bother you, but my door is stuck.”

“ _Your door is stuck?_ ”

“Yeah,” she sighed, “like, the button won’t work?”

Through the channel, Shelby heard Toni groan. “ _Okay, I’ll be there in a minute. What room are you in?_ ”

“Six.”

The line cut off then, and Shelby huffed. She knew Toni wasn’t just _like that_ , had seen how warm she was with Martha and some of their other crewmates. It was unclear what Shelby had done to piss her off so quickly, if she’d even done anything. Maybe Toni just didn’t like people from Texas.

“Though she likes Dot just fine,” Shelby muttered. She sat in the chair at her desk and spun around slowly. When Toni had come for her first physical, it had gone smoothly. It was mostly scans, seeing what her body’s reaction was to landing. Everyone had to go through it and give a blood sample. Shelby ran over their interactions in her head, trying to find a moment when she’d maybe slipped up.

Of course, she hadn’t. If nothing else, Shelby knew how to do her job and stay professional. Even when Toni had pulled her shirt off for Shelby to listen to her heartbeat, and she had felt an unwelcome pull behind her bellybutton. Even then, Shelby knew she had kept her composure.

So what the hell is her problem?

“Hey, you in there?” That voice called from the other side of the door, with that hoarse quality that gets under Shelby’s skin.

“Where else would I be?” Shelby answered.

“Just checking,” Toni said. “Okay, I’m going to patch in out here and do an override, so I hope you’re decent.”

Shelby looked down at her standard issue t-shirt and pants, the ISA logo standing out above her breast against the white material of her shirt. “Always am.”

“Right.” It sounded like Toni had scoffed at her, but Shelby let it roll off her back like water on a duck.

The door grinded open, and Toni appeared from behind it. She was dressed the same as Shelby, her hair pulled into a ponytail just like Shelby’s.

“Thank you so much,” Shelby said, standing and offering up one of her best smiles. “I was afraid I’d be stuck in here forever.”

“No problem,” Toni’s face was stuck in this sour look. Her eyes flitted over Shelby’s body so quickly that she thought she might have imagined it. “I’m going to check it out, but you can go do…whatever it is you do.”

“I’m the doctor here,” Shelby could feel anger start to rise in her at the dismissive tone of Toni’s words, “so I actually _do_ have a lot to do. Like keeping you all alive.”

Toni didn’t dignify her with a response, just grabbed a tool from her back pocket and started working. Shelby stepped over the metal box that Toni had left in the middle of the doorway, and with one last look down at the mechanic who was so clearly set on ignoring her, Shelby returned the favour and walked away down the hallway.

******

_Leah Rilke and Rachel Reid stand next to each other in the Garage. There’s an array of mechanical parts on the workbench in front of them. Behind them, the CORE Drill is suspended from the ceiling._

_“So, we’re running routine cleaning on the CORE drill,” Rachel explains. “It’s been sitting gathering dust, and we need it up and running by Sol 15 so I can start collecting samples.”_

_“It’s pretty boring,” Leah mumbles._

_Rachel rolls her eyes, but she nods her head. “Leah’s right, it’s pretty lame. Just lots of dismantling and cleaning with either this,” she holds up a can of compressed air, “or a damp towel.”_

_“Leah,” Fatin says off camera, “why don’t you show us what you’re doing?”_

_Leah frowns, but holds up the piece of machinery. It’s got curled rivets, and Leah wipes it down with a towel. “This is one of the drill bits, used mostly for digging to the right depth before we attach the corer.” She looks past the camera and rolls her eyes. “What else do you want me to say?"_

_“Ugh,” Fatin groans, “it’s like pulling fucking teeth with you guys.”_

******

**Sol 7**

At night, the lights of the HAB dimmed to simulate the conditions outside. There were few rooms with windows – in fact, only the Mess and the Greenhouse were equipped with anything big enough to qualify as a window. There were tiny viewports in each crew member’s quarters, each hardly bigger than the average brick.

The artificial night didn’t do anything to help Dot fall asleep. There was something wholly unnatural about it – obviously, it was artificial light. She had tried everything she could think of so far: exercise an hour before lights out, listening to ocean sounds, reading off the few non-holo readers, going over the coming week’s assignments.

Nothing worked.

Dot gave up and slid out of her bed, narrowly avoiding bumping her head on the top of the bunk. She pulled on her standard-issue boots and the standard-issue jacket that showed off her rank and position. It was the only thing that differentiated her from her crew members – the five little triangular stripes that labeled her _commander_.

The door to her quarters opened with a gentle rumble, hardly discernable over the constant hum of the HAB’s operating systems. She walked quietly through the hallway, the doors to the other crew members’ quarters all shut, the little red lights all indicating that they didn’t want to be disturbed.

Her boots echoed softly in the empty rec room. The air had cooled for the night, making her glad she’d bothered to grab her jacket.

The Mess Hall was attached to the north (not true north, of course, but north as in ‘at the top of’) end of the rec room. A short hallway opened up into the small room. Like all the other rooms, it was mostly white. Counters lined the walls, cupboards stocked full of rations and dehydrated meals.

And oat milk.

Dot didn’t know exactly what the reason was, but the ISA loved their fucking oat milk. On the trip here, Nora had explained it as something to do with density or mass. Dot was pretty sure that the ISA just liked to fuck people.

There were other things too, of course. Things Dot had asked the ISA to supply for her crew. They were going to be here for a while, and if Dot knew anything about people, it was that they _loved_ a special meal. Vacuum sealed vegetables and grains, even some cake mixes so that they could indulge for birthdays.

But, for now, she just poured herself a glass of oat milk and sat at the table.

At 32, she had accepted this mission with as much bravado as she could muster. It was almost unheard of, getting to lead this kind of team at her age. Of course, it was also almost unheard of to reach her rank at the age she did, so Dot figured it was all above board.

She had also figured at least _one of_ her crew would have been to Mars before, or at least into space.

That had clearly been a pipe dream.

But, for all their inexperience in outer space, they were a crack team. Nora and Rachel Reid, the Wonder Twins. Toni Shalifoe and Leah Rilke, two young female mechanics who had worked their asses off to get to where they were. Dr. Shelby Goodkind, the woman who had made the cover of _American Scientific_ at age 25 after completing her doctorate and revolutionising the way researchers were looking at sub-microscopic lifeforms. Martha Blackburn, the prodigy of astro-botany.

And Fatin Jadmani.

That one was a little harder to come to terms with.

Dot had a pretty hard and fast rule that social media had no business poisoning space. It had already done a pretty good job of ruining Earth, and Dot liked to think that outer space could be somewhere free of all that shitty consumerism and media-capitalism.

Of course, her complaints had gone ignored and unanswered. The ISA had been pretty fucking clear that they wanted “total transparency”, and that apparently meant bring Fatin Jadmani along to vlog the whole fucking thing.

Dot took a hearty gulp of the oat milk, scrunching her nose up at the slightly chalky texture.

“Can’t sleep?”

It’s Fatin. Of course.

They had bonded a bit on the flight, but the crew had been so busy preparing and stressing that the opportunities for team-bonding had been few and far between.

“Nope,” Dot answered, popping the end the word. “You either, huh?”

“I’m still not used to how quiet it is,” Fatin said, sitting across from her. “Like, I know we were in actual nothing space for three months, but this…being grounded, and there just being nothing out there?” She shrugged and tapped her nails on the table. “It’s fucking weird.”

“I’d say you get used to it, but,” Dot raised her hand and gestured at herself, “clearly I’m no shining beacon of hope.”

Fatin grinned and nodded at the cup. “Oat milk?”

“Unfortunately.”

They sat in silence for a bit, the only sounds being the tapping of Fatin’s nails and the occasional bounce of Dot’s boot off the floor.

“Can I ask you something?” Fatin broke the silence.

Dot shrugged. “On or off the record?”

“Off,” Fatin said, rolling her eyes. Dot nodded. “Are you, like, nervous at all?”

“Why would I be nervous?” Dot asked, hiding the very real _yes_ that sits under her tongue.

“Well, from what Gretchen told me, you’re the youngest person to be put in charge of a mission like this.” Fatin said it like it was a throwaway fact, instead of part of the thing that won’t let her sleep. “And the whole crew is pretty fresh, right?”

“Fresh just means ready to prove themselves,” Dot said. “I mean, it’s daunting or whatever, but we’re up for it.”

Fatin smiled and said, “yeah, I’m sure you are.” She pushed her chair back and stood. “Listen, I don’t know if I said this before, but…it’s really cool. This,” she waved her hands around, “whole thing. Being here and stuff.”

“Does that mean you’re volunteering to help Martha with the fertilizer?”

Fatin laughed, and Dot grinned. “In your _dreams_ , commander.” She backed out of the Mess with one final smile.

Okay, so maybe having Fatin Jadmani around wasn’t so bad after all.

******

_“So, what do astronauts get up to on their long-ass flights out to far-away planets?” Fatin Jadmani’s voice comes from behind the camera. The interior of_ Coelus _is the backdrop._

_Martha Blackburn looks up from her hand. “Uno!” She waves the cards at the camera and smiles. “One of the many fun things I packed in my personals.”_

_Across from her, Toni Shalifoe groans, “Of all the fuckin’ things.”_

_“Is Uno like, part of keeping your minds sharp for the mission ahead of you?”_

_“Yeah,” Toni says with a sarcastic nod, “it’s really important for us to keep our basic arithmetic skills in shape._

_Shelby Goodkind appears at the edge of the frame and cringes. “Shoot, did I interrupt?” She peers down at the table. “Is that Uno?”_

_“Do you want me to deal you in?” Martha asks._

_“I don’t want to intrude,” Shelby says, hesitance written across her face._

_“Then don’t.” It’s so quiet that the microphone almost misses it, but even without the words, Toni’s narrowed eyes and curled lip say it all._

_“You’re not,” Martha reassures the doctor, “c’mon.”_

******

**Sol 9**

Toni’s feet pounded on the treadmill, her breath leaving her in short bursts. The worst part of living in space had to be the constant need to exercise and keep her musculature and skeleton from degrading to a point of no return.

It was, in the most literal of senses, the doctor’s orders.

And the doctor was constantly monitoring the activities of the crew. If someone missed even one _minute_ of their MPA (Mandatory Physical Activity), Shelby was up their ass.

Toni didn’t want Shelby Goodkind anywhere _near_ her ass.

In the past nine sols, she had managed to do a pretty good job of avoiding Shelby. There was the intial check-up, and that shit with the door, but other than that, it had been surprisingly easy to miss her in such tight quarters. Everyone operates on a similar schedule, but there’s an unspoken rule that you don’t bother someone on their off-time unless they look like they’re open for interaction.

Personal boundaries are even more important when you’re stuck living with a bunch of people that you barely know, in an enclosed space that’s smaller than most Beverly Hills houses, for nearly a year.

The door to the gym opened, and Toni checked over her shoulder to see who it was.

Of course, it was Shelby.

“Sorry,” Shelby said, “I didn’t know you were here. I can go.” She made to step back through the door, but Toni hit the slowing button on the treadmill.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, wiping sweat from her forehead with the hem of her shirt. “I’m done.”

“Oh,” Shelby looked at her, slightly stunned. Toni hopped off the treadmill and grabbed the towel she had left draped over the weights. “Well, thank you.”

Toni nodded, stepping aside to let Shelby pass by her. She rubbed the towel down her face, the micro-fibers of the material soft against the grime of her skin. As she wiped down her neck, she opened her eyes and looked in the mirror in front of her.

Which was definitely a mistake.

Because, as it turned out, Shelby Goodkind was as hot as she is irritating.

Toni dropped her towel. “Fuck.” She bent down quickly and picked it up, tossing it over her shoulder.

“Everything okay?” Shelby asked, in that drawling accent of hers that suddenly sounded less like nails on a chalkboard and more like the gentle chime of bells, or some shit like that.

“Uh,” Toni dragged her eyes away from the exposed skin of Shelby’s back, from the lines of the _pink_ sports bra (which, how the fuck did she get a pink sports bra? Toni thought the ISA was pretty committed to their colour palate of black, white, and navy blue), “yeah, just…dropped something.”

“Alright.”

“What the fuck are you wearing?” The words tumbled into the air before Toni could catch them.

“Um,” Shelby looked down at herself as she ran, and Toni made the mistake of following her eyes and catching sight of the pale skin that disappeared down the front of the object in question, “a sports bra?”

“I just mean, like,” Toni stuttered, “it doesn’t look ISA.”

“It’s not,” Shelby said. “Brought it in my personals.”

“You brought a bra in your personals?” Toni scoffed. “You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

Shelby frowned, slowing the treadmill and turning to face her. “What’s your problem with me?”

The question was direct and unexpected. It caught Toni off-guard, but she found the answer in the gritting of her teeth.

“Maybe I just don’t like you.” Toni shrugged and went to tuck her hands in pockets. Of course, the running shorts she was wearing didn’t _have_ any pockets, so she just looked like an idiot pushing her sweaty palms against her thighs.

“Right,” Shelby said, tilting her head. “Well, you do realise we’re sort of stuck here for a while, right? Might be in our best interests to…figure it out?”

Toni looked her up and down, that ever-present golden cross against her clavicle reflecting the fluorescent lights. “I don’t think so.”

“God built us to contain multitudes,” Shelby said, “I’d like to think that maybe, if we got to know each other, we could find at least one thing in common.”

“Yeah, well,” Toni backed up to the door, “this is Mars. God doesn’t have any jurisdiction here.” With that, she turned and left, slamming her open palm against the door’s controls and listening to it shut behind her as she walked down the hall.

******

_Shelby Goodkind smiles at the camera. “Okay, so, here’s the best part of space travel.” She pushes off from the wall and floats for a second in zero-G. “Only a few parts of the ship are regulated by our gravitational regulator, so in some spots, like capsule Discovery,” she grabs the ceiling and pulls herself back, falling into a slow backflip, “we get to do this!”_

_Fatin Jadmani floats on screen, her hair flying loose behind her as she squirts out some water and chases after it with her tongue out._

_“It also makes drinking way more fun,” she says, her lips closing around the bubble._

_“And every day is crazy hair day,” Shelby beams at the camera, taking the tie out of her hair and letting it fly loose._

**_**_ **

**Sol 15**

“Damn, Marty,” Toni said with a low whistle, “they’re looking good.”

Martha beamed at her and gently touched the leaves of the carrots that are starting to push through the earth. “They’re the Earth soil batch, though,” she said, “the Mars batch aren’t showing me anything yet.”

Toni wandered over to the other side of the greenhouse, where there were rows of planters full of Martian soil. “Wrong minerals, or whatever?”

“Mars doesn’t have any nitrogen in its soil,” Martha said, “or phosphorous. Plants need those. There’s a crap-ton of potassium, though.”

“So, what’s your plan?” Toni took a pinch of the soil, feeling its grainy texture rub between her finger tips. “Anything I can do?”

“You know how to make nitrogen?” Martha laughed. “Thanks, Toni, but I think it’s just going to be a matter of hybridizing the soil. And figuring out which plants can deal with a little more adversity in their environment.”

“Rather you than me,” Toni said, “I like problems that have actual solutions.”

Martha came up and wrapped her arm around Toni’s shoulders. “That’s why you’re the mechanic.” She squeezed her in a quick side hug and then let her go. “Shelby says that there’s no such thing as a problem without a solution.”

Toni groaned. “Who fucking cares what she says?”

“She’s a nice person, Toni,” Martha said, “you should try getting to know her.”

“I _do_ know her, okay, Martha?” Toni snapped, immediately biting her bottom lip and wishing she could retract her tone. “Sorry. It’s just, she’s just like every other rich white girl, y’know? Did you know she went to Harvard? I bet her _daddy_ basically bought her her degrees.”

“You don’t know that,” Martha sighed, used to the ebbing and flowing of Toni’s anger. “She worked hard to be here, same as us.”“Except she’s not the same as us,” Toni said, a laugh ripping exasperated from her chest, “she’s not even close! You _know_ what I had to go through just to make it into the space program. How we both struggled for so long to get recognition, to be taken seriously as young Native American women in our fields!”

“Do you think she just coasted through?” Martha asked. She trailed her fingers along the edge of the planter, pushing stray granules of dirt back into the box.

“I’m sure she did,” Toni stated, and that ended that conversation. She saw herself out of the greenhouse, taking slow, even breaths to calm her racing heart. Down the hallway, she could hear the sounds of Nora and Rachel arguing in the server room.

They were always arguing, those two. Toni doesn’t know if that’s just a sister thing, or there’s something else going on, but it’s really fucking irritating. It’s been fifteen sols, and there hasn’t been a single day that’s gone by without the two Reid sisters at each other’s throats.

Deciding it was none of her business, Toni hunched her shoulders and marched past the server room. On the opposite side of the hallway, she did her best to ignore the doors to the Medical Bay, and the soft music that was trickling through them.

In the garage, she found Leah working away underneath _Flora_. Toni crouched down and knocked on the outer shell of the Rover.

“Hey,” she called out, “you need a hand?”

Leah slid out from underneath the Rover, a surly frown marring her face. She popped two earbuds out and looked up at Toni. “What?”

“A hand,” Toni said, “do you need one?”

“Oh,” Leah sat up and looked around, “uh, no. No, thanks.”

Toni shrugged and nodded at the vehicle. “What are you doing?”

“She got roughed up yesterday when I took Rachel to get a few soil samples,” Leah explained. “Just fixing the suspension, double checking the undercarriage for other damage.”

“I’m pretty good with this shit,” Toni said, “and I’ve got nothing but time today.”

“No, I, uh,” Leah scratched at her hairline, shaking her head, “I don’t really like it when people try to help. They usually just fuck it up.” At Toni’s indignant raise of her brow, Leah tried to backtrack. “Not that I think you’d fuck it up. I just have to do it myself. Double check it myself.”

“Okay,” Toni said, holding up her hands in surrender, “well, if you change your mind, give me a call.” She turned away as Leah went back under, and she widened her eyes in annoyed disbelief. She understood wanting to check the work, and get it right, everyone in the space program had to be a bit of a perfectionist, but Leah is next level.

Toni passed her day doing routine maintenance checks. Atmospheric regulator, EVA suits, airlock seals, everything had to be checked every three days. She logged the status of all the components, and it had still only been an hour.

She opened the communication app on the holo-screen and hit Dot’s icon.

“ _Reading you, Shalifoe_.”

“I want to head outside, check the outside integrity of the HAB and see about getting a head-start on rigging up Solars 5 and 6.” Toni waited for the response.

“ _Not alone,”_ Dot replied, “ _if you can find a buddy, you’re cleared to go._ ”

Toni rolled her eyes at the term ‘buddy’, but she agreed and closed the call. Her first choice was always Martha, but she knew the botanist was busy today. Unsure who to call next, Toni put out an IM to the entire crew and waited for someone to volunteer.

“ _Hey, Toni,_ ” Fatin’s voice came through the comm speakers _, “I hear you need a buddy_.”

Suiting up took even longer with a civilian. Toni had to go over the routine safety speech, which she would normally slack off doing with a fellow trained astronaut. Fatin insisted on taking her camera and filming the little “adventure”, as she was calling it, hoping to get some good footage of the planet.

“Okay, releasing pressure,” Toni said, hitting the button next to the airlock door. The pressure began to change with a steady hiss that would have been deafening without their helmets.

The green light came on above the outer door, and Toni pulled the lever.

It never got old, stepping out onto a whole different planet. It was possible to forget that they were there, spending days at a time inside the HAB, and every opportunity to step out had to be cherished.

“Okay, stick with me,” Toni said to Fatin, who was already holding up the camera and lining up her shot. She fell behind immediately, and Toni rolled her eyes as she had to grab Fatin by the arm and drag her along. “Seriously, dude, you gotta stick with me. If anything happens to you, it’s my ass on the line."

The walk to the Solars took about ten minutes, give or take. By some universal mercy, Fatin hadn’t tried to keep up a conversation with Toni, maybe too busy filming to try and find something to talk about.

When they reached the Solars, Toni put Fatin to work against her will. It was pretty easy work, really. There was a standing tank of pressurized air with a long hose. That was used to blow sand from the panels, and it was almost the easiest job on the entire base.

Fatin complained the whole time. Toni wished she could turn off her comms, but Dot had pretty strict open-line policies in place when people were outside.

As Toni was soldering some wires together, Fatin tapped her on the shoulder.“Jesus, Fatin,” Toni groaned, “just blow the fucking sand off before I use the air to blow you back into orbit.”

“Yeah, as much as I would _love_ for you to blow me,” Fatin said, “I think we’ve got bigger problems.”

Toni looked up to where Fatin was pointing. At the edge of the horizon, two tall columns of dust were spinning underneath a dark cloud.

“Shit.” Toni turned off the soldering gun and tapped her wrist-panel. “Nora, do you read?”

“ _Loud and clear_ ,” Nora’s voice answered.

“You got rad on that twin devil?” Toni asked.

The line crackled. “ _Oh. Yes, I do now. You guys should get back inside ASAP.”_

“Copy that.” Toni signalled to Fatin that they should head back. “ETA in ten minutes.”

“Wait, let me just get a shot of this,” Fatin said, turning her camera on the horizon.

“Fatin, we need to go,” Toni insisted. When the other woman didn’t budge, Toni grabbed her by the back of her suit’s harness and pulled hard. Fatin stumbled, crying out in surprise and dropping her camera.

“Fuck!” She yelled, bending down and picking it up. Her gloved hands were clumsy as they wiped dirt from the camera. “What the fuck was that for?”

“I don’t want to die in a goddamn dust storm,” Toni shouted back, “let’s fucking _move_!”

Fatin obliged this time, but it was a much slower journey than the walk out. She kept stopping and lining up frames, ignoring Toni’s firm and occasionally rude words about hurrying the fuck up.

“ _Ground team, you read?_ ”

It’s Dot, and Toni opens her line. “I read you.”

“ _What the fuck is taking you so long?”_

“I’m getting some great shots,” Fatin answered.

Through the fuzzy comm line, Toni could feel Dot’s annoyance.

“ _Fatin, put the camera away and get the fuck inside_.”

As if on cue, the dust around them started to kick up. Toni cursed and resisted the urge to stomp her foot in frustration.

“Fatin, don’t fuck with me right now,” she said. “Mars doesn’t fuck around, and neither can we.” When Fatin didn’t answer, Toni grabbed her and turned her roughly so they were face to face. “Do you _want_ to die millions of miles away from home because you were too fucking stupid to get inside on time?”

“Calm down,” Fatin started, but Toni shook her.

“I’m not dying because you’re an idiot. Let’s fucking go!”

Fatin stumbled along, her camera still held aloft. The wind was getting stronger by the second, and the airlock door was still too far away for comfort. Toni picked up her pace, hoping Fatin would notice and keep up.

By the time she reached the door, the wind was whipping small stones through the air. Toni pulled the outer lever and the door rolled open. Once she had stepped inside, she turned to look for Fatin. Visibility was bad, but she could make out the shape of the other woman, a dozen or so meters from the door.

“Fatin, hurry!”

“I can’t see the door!” Panic had coloured Fatin’s voice, the severity of the situation seeming to have finally sunk in. “Shit, shit, shit, where’s the fucking door.”

“Fuck me.” Toni grabbed the emergency tether line and clipped it to the side of her suit. The wind buffeted her as she pushed forward through the swirling dust. She aimed herself towards where she had last seen Fatin. “Stay still, I’m coming.”

It feels like an impossible task, the wind getting stronger and stronger. Pelted with dust and stone, Toni flinched at everything that bounced off her helmet.

She collided hard with Fatin. They didn’t speak, Fatin allowing Toni to grip her by the harness and follow the tether back to the airlock.

They both tripped over the lip of the threshold, falling forward into the airlock. Toni reached up blindly, her fingers closing around the lever. With a mighty grunt, she slammed it down and watched with relief as the door closed.

“ _Pressurizing the airlock_ ,” Nora’s voice said over the comm line. A minute passed. “ _Clear_.”

Toni ripped her helmet off and tossed it aside. “Fuck.”

Beside her, Fatin sat frozen, her helmet still locked on. The inner door opened, Dot and Shelby stepping into the airlock with concerned creases in their brows.

“You okay?” Dot asked. Toni held up a gloved thumb, sitting back against the wall. She pulled the skull cap off and wiped the thin layer of sweat from her brow.

Shelby is kneeling in front of Fatin, gently taking the woman’s helmet off for her.

“What the _fuck_ , Fatin!” Toni yelled. The adrenaline of the moment was coursing through her veins still, the realisation that she could have died so that Fatin had enough content for her fucking followers. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”  
  
“Take it down a notch,” Shelby warned, “can’t you see she’s frightened enough already?”

Toni looked at Fatin, her eyes staring blankly ahead. “She should be. Un-fucking-believable.” She got to her feet and wiped dust from the front of her suit. Dot backed up, giving Toni space to stomp past them and into Central, her anger lingering in the air even after she had gone.

******

_“What do you miss the most about Earth?”_

_Nora Reid shrugs, a little smile twisting her lips. “Is it too obvious if I say the food?”_

_“Absolutely it is,” Fatin Jadmani says._

_“Well,” Nora draws the word out, tilting her head, “I guess it would be that on Earth, you can just go outside whenever you want. Like, if you’re craving a chocolate bar, you can just walk down the street to the corner store.”_

_“You realise that’s still about food, right?”_

******

**Sol 21**

Fatin found Toni in the Rec Room. The latter was slumped on a couch, headphones covering her ears as she watched something on a tablet that was propped up on her knees. Fatin knew the rule, unspoken though it was, and she decided to break it.

“Hey,” Fatin shoved Toni’s bent knees. With a frown, Toni pulled one earpiece from her head.

“What?”

Sitting down next to Toni’s feet, Fatin tapped the side of her own head to indicate that Toni should take the other earpiece off. Toni groaned, but she complied, setting the headphones down on the floor. She rubbed her fingers against her temples, waiting for Fatin to continue.

“I just,” Fatin paused and pursed her lips, “wanted to apologise. For almost getting us killed.”

Toni raised an eyebrow. “That was, like, a week ago.”“I know,” Fatin laughed, “would you believe I’ve just been, like, crazy busy?”

“Not at all.”

Fatin sighed. She leaned her head back and stared up at the ceiling. “I was embarrassed, okay? There’s something about being out there, it’s hard to…to remember the danger.”

“Except it’s not,” Toni snapped, “it’s not hard at all. You’re just not trained for it.” She grabbed her headphones and stood up. “Just remember, Fatin – everything about this planet is trying to kill you.” She looped the headphones around her neck and waved the tablet in parting as she walked away.

“Is there anyone here with a scrap of fucking humanity?” Fatin grumbled.

“If you’re looking for humanity, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

Across the room, having gone unnoticed by Fatin this whole time, was Shelby. She was sitting at one of the small tables, a mug of something steaming in front of her. An actual, honest-to-goodness book was lying open on the table.

“Shit, you scared me,” Fatin said, holding a hand to her chest.

“Sorry.” Shelby held her hand out. “You want to sit?”

Fatin shrugged and took the offered chair. “What’re you reading?”

“Oh,” Shelby tapped the open page, “just the, uh, _good word_.”

“I didn’t think they let people bring like, real paper. Isn’t the ISA pretty adverse to anything that’s even mildly flammable?” Fatin wiggled her fingers. “It’s why I don’t get to have anything nice on these bad boys.”

“Religious reasons,” Shelby said. “How are you feeling?”

“Are you asking as a doctor?”

Shelby smiled, closing the bible. “As a friend?” It came across as a question, and Fatin pulled her lips to the side as she pretended to consider it.

“I guess my options up here are pretty limited,” she teased.

With a laugh, Shelby said, “tell me about it.” Her fingers went to the golden cross that hung from her neck.

“Are _you_ okay?” Fatin knew she would probably regret asking, but her heart was caught in a moment of empathy.

“Oh, I’m fine,” Shelby says, waving her off, “just…have you ever noticed how Toni is, like, the _most_ unpleasant person? Especially recently, it’s like she’s purposefully trying to be as rude as possible. She hardly looks at anyone, let alone speaks to them.”

“I mean, she’s not the friendliest person, but-”

“It’s like, no matter what I say to her,” Shelby continued, with little regard for Fatin’s words, “she finds a way to hate me, y’know? Which is ridiculous, because I have been nothing but nice to her. _God_ , she makes me want to just – well,” she took a sharp breath in through her nose, a wide smile plastered onto her face, “the Lord wants us to be instruments of love.”

“Jesus,” Fatin said, “why do you care if she likes you?”

“I don’t!” Shelby’s voice carried a bite to it, and Fatin leaned back with her hands up in surrender. “I just…we’ve still got a long time up here.”

Fatin hummed, and Shelby clenched her jaw. “Look, I know I’m not a fancy astronaut like you guys,” she said, “but that might give me more authority to speak on this than you.” She leaned across the table and linked her fingers together, like something out of an old gangster film. “If I were you, I’d take five minutes out of my day to think _really_ hard about why you care so much about whether or not Toni likes you.” Her eyes drifted down to the closed bible. “Maybe ten minutes.”

She stood up and gave Shelby a flimsy salute, leaving the doctor alone in the Rec Room.

******

_“Did you leave anyone special back home?”_

_Leah Rilke looks up from her tablet and frowns. “Why would you ask me that?”_

_“I’m asking everyone that.”_

_“Well,” Leah holds the tablet up and blocks her face from Fatin’s camera, “it’s none of your business.”_

_“Okaaay,” Fatin says, “sorry. Jesus.”_

_“Can you get your stupid camera out of my face?” Leah snaps. “I’m so sick of it.”_

******

**Sol 28**

“How long have you had this headache?” Shelby tilted Toni’s chin up and shone a light in her eyes. Her pupils dilated appropriately, and Shelby did her best to ignore the amber quality to their brown, the way her irises seemed to sparkle under the harsh light.

“Since the storm,” Toni says, “it wasn’t too bad for a while, but the last few days it’s just…been shitty.”

Shelby hummed and took a step back. “Well, I can give you some pain meds. You don’t seem concussed, so that’s good.” She turned to the counter behind her and typed in the passcode to open it up. Trailing her fingers along the labels, Shelby found the right bottle and grabbed it.

“What is it?” Toni asked.

“A very serious drug,” Shelby said solemnly, “so you need to be careful with it.” She held it out to Toni, ignoring the warmth of her skin as their fingers brushed.

“Acetaminophen.” Toni rolled her eyes. “Tylenol?”

Shelby shrugged and leaned back against the edge of the counter. “It’s great for headaches.”

She watched as Toni bit her bottom lip. Her cheeks had a pretty pink flush to them, her fingers were turning the bottle over with a deftness that made Shelby’s own skin heat up.

“Well,” Toni said with a sigh, “I’ll give it a shot.” She hopped down from the exam table, brushing past Shelby. She smelled like the ISA-issued shampoo and body wash, and something underneath it that Shelby couldn’t place.

Toni paused in the doorway and tapped her fist against the frame. “Thanks.”

“Of course,” Shelby said, “happy to help.”

Toni nodded and turned down the hallway. Shelby let out a breath, one that had been caught in her chest since Toni had walked into the Med Bay.

Ever since her conversation with Fatin, Shelby had felt off-kilter. Especially around Toni, who seemed able to disarm her even when she was being rude. There was something about her eyes, or her voice, or the curl of her hair – something that made Shelby quake and simmer with a feeling that was not entirely unfamiliar.

Shaking her head, Shelby closed the medicine cabinet. Her head ran with thoughts of how warm Toni’s fingers had felt against her own. That dusting of a flush across her sharp cheekbones.

For a second, Shelby allowed herself to wonder if she would ever be the one to put a flush in Toni’s cheeks.

It was a dangerous thought, and Shelby distracted herself with tidying up the already-immaculate Med Bay. For one, it was against a few pretty strict ISA fraternization rules to…want to make your crewmates blush. Shelby lived by rules, she thrived under the structure of rules.

Secondly, it was extremely inappropriate for Shelby to be thinking that type of thing about someone who was basically her patient. It was different, of course, because the roles of patient and crewmate were all mixed up, but she held no desire to put her reputation as a physician on the line.

Not even to find out how Toni’s warm fingers would feel against her cheeks.

“Stop it,” Shelby scolded herself in a whisper. “Just stop it.”

“Stop what?”

Of course, Toni had appeared behind her. Shelby jumped at the sudden intrusion, her hands gripping the edge of the counter as she leaned forward onto it.

“Sorry,” Toni said, “I just forgot my sweater.” She pointed at the exam table, and Shelby nodded.

“Right,” she breathed, “of course.” Her fingers closed around the soft material, black and hooded. Her hand trembled as she held it out to Toni.

“Thanks.” Toni took the sweater and pulled it on over her head.

Shelby looked at her, her hair mussed from the slide of the fabric. Her cheeks were still slightly flushed, and something clicked in Shelby’s brain.

It happened, sometimes. When she was working on a project, or trying to diagnose a patient, there would be a moment. Like a lightbulb, as cheesy as it sounded.

“You look hot.”

Toni’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “Excuse me?”

Shelby stepped forward and held her hand up to Toni’s forehead. Her skin burned against the back of Shelby’s hand, and Shelby cursed herself for being so distracted by her own stupid internal turmoil.

“You’re burning up,” she mumbled. “Come, lie down.”

“I’m fine,” Toni said, and Shelby noticed the dryness of her lips, the skin cracked and pale. “Really, I just need to take some of these and I’ll be fine.” She rattled the bottle of pills.

“No, you don’t,” Shelby said, “you need fluids and rest. Two things I can give you right here.”

Toni opened her mouth as if to argue, but she suddenly swayed on the spot. “Okay, yeah, maybe you’re right.”

Shelby rolled her eyes and helped Toni over to the small patient bed. Once Toni was lying back on the bed, Shelby set up an IV drip and gave her a dose of a sedative.

“You should fall asleep soon,” Shelby reassured her, “just try to relax, alright?”

Toni nodded, her eyelids already drooping from the meds. “Thank you.” Her hand reached out and patted along the bed until she reached up and found Shelby’s hand. Her palm was clammy, and Shelby’s heart began beating her ribs like the skin of a drum.

“Of course,” Shelby said. She gave Toni’s hand a squeeze and set it down gently. “I’ll be here when you wake up, okay?”

“Good drugs,” Toni mumbled. Her eyes drifted shut, her jaw fell slack, and finally Shelby felt like she could breathe.

******

_“Okay, so just introduce yourself.”_

_The camera focuses on the face of Toni Shalifoe, and she cleared her throat._

_“Uh, hey, my name is Toni Shalifoe, and I’m the resident EVA specialist, and mechanical electrical engineer. What? Oh. EVA, Extravehicular Activity. So, spacewalks, planet walks. I’ll be the one in charge of checking all the EVA gear, and leading training for the rest of the crew.” She pauses and looks past the camera._

_“Keep going.”_

_Toni nods and moistens her lips. “Most of them are scientists, so they haven’t had the same extent of that type of training that I have. I’m also in charge of HAB maintenance, keeping things up and running. If someone has a problem with their quarters, or their labs, whatever, I’m the first call.”_

_“So you’re like, the custodian?”_

_“I mean, I guess so,” Toni says, her brow furrowing, “but I’m not picking up garbage and shit. I’m keeping everyone alive. Including your princess ass, Fatin.”_

_Fatin laughs offscreen._

******

**Sol 30**

Dot stood in Med Bay with her arms crossed over her chest as she stared at Toni’s restless shape.

“What is it?” She asked through the material of her mask. “A flu? How the hell would she get a flu here?”

Shelby shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know what else it could be.” The results of Toni’s blood test were up on the big holo-screen, and Shelby pointed at the anomaly. “It’s possible that something got into her suit. If there was a malfunction with her suit’s filter, maybe, I…I guess that could be it?”

“I’ll get Leah to take a look at all the suits,” Dot said, opening up her holo-tablet and making a work-order request. It was sent off directly and immediately to Leah. “What do we do, Shelby?”

“I’m giving her everything I can think of,” Shelby pulled up the window of Toni’s drug treatments. “Ibuprofen for her fever, fluids with a mix of vitamins, sedatives to help her sleep…she’s only gotten worse. And it’s been an exponential decline, she’s just gotten worse and worse every hour.”

“She said it started when she went on the walk with Fatin?” Dot cursed when Shelby confirmed it. “Fucking hell, and she didn’t say anything?”

“I honestly think it hadn’t been all that bad until she came to get treatment for headaches.”

On the bed, Toni groans and twists. Shelby goes to her side, tapping her fingers on the screen of the automated IV drip.

“Martha,” Toni moaned, “where’s…Martha…”

“She can’t come in here, Toni,” Shelby said, and she wished that there wasn’t the quarantine forcefield between them, she wished that she could reach out and lay her hand on Toni’s shoulder and let her know someone was here. “You’re sick, we can’t risk anyone else being exposed.”

“Please,” Toni’s eyes shot open and Shelby nearly staggered back with the intensity of those bloodshot eyes, “please, don’t let me die.”

“You are _not_ going to die, Toni,” Shelby said, firm through the swell of tears that gathered uninvited in her eyes. “I promise.”

Toni nodded, a dry cough rising in her chest. “Thank…you.”

Shelby nodded, pressing her lips together. “I’m gonna give you some more sedatives, alright?”

Her only response was the slow closing of Toni’s eyes as the meds kicked in.

“She’ll be alright, right?” Dot asked. Shelby stepped back from the bed, clenching her hands into fists at her side.

“I won’t let her be anything else.”

******


	2. sol 31 - 49

**Sol 31**

Martha Blackburn liked to think of herself as on optimist. She believed in the innate goodness of humanity; that, given the chance, every person would choose kindness over hate. And the universe; the universe held a balance, and it would reward those who chose to live their lives positively.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t been through a lot; no, Martha had seen her fair share of horrible things. Where she and Toni came from, there was no lack of struggle. Everything always felt just out of their reach. Toni chose to confront that with anger; Martha chose love.

It was part of why she enjoyed botany so much; plants were things of love. All they needed was water, food, light, and someone to take care of them. Uncomplicated – that’s what really drew Martha to botany at first. As she learned more, she realised that plants were actually extremely complicated, at least individually. How much water a fiscus needed, or the exact level of light exposure that a fern could handle without becoming brittle.

But at the core of it, plants never deceived or disappointed. If one died, Martha knew who to blame.

Now, as she watched Shelby through the window of the Med Bay and the prone form of Toni in the bed, she couldn’t seem to find the bright side.

By all accounts, it didn’t make any sense. As far as the research showed, there were no living bacteria or viruses on the surface of Mars. The filtration systems in the EVA ground suits were top-class, and Toni ran routine maintenance and systems checks on them.

“She’ll be okay,” Nora reassured from beside her, her hand rubbing a gentle rhythm on Martha’s arm.

Inside, Shelby was bent over a microscope. Her hair was falling out of her topknot, little strands catching in the harsh lights. Martha knew the doctor was practically killing herself to figure out what was happening to Toni.

“She’s always had a bad immune system,” Martha mumbled. “She got strep throat in high school and missed, like, three weeks of classes.” She sniffled and wiped at her eyes. “I just want to go hold her hand or something.”

Nora nodded and squeezed her arm. “I always hated seeing Rachel sick. It felt like it was happening to me, too.”

Martha opened her mouth to answer, but at that moment, Shelby shoved her chair back and leapt to her feet. Like a child in the window of a candy store, Martha pressed her hands to the glass, staring with unblinking eyes.

Shelby slammed the cupboards open, her movements frantic as she shoved different bottles and capsules out of the way. Martha could see her lips moving, forming silent words as she rifled through the medicines.

“She’s figured something out,” Martha gasped. Nora darted over to the communications panel across the hallway. In the background, Martha heard her call Dot, telling her to come quickly.

Shelby turned to the door, a syringe and a little glass bottle in her hands. Martha waited and watched as Shelby nodded at her and uncapped the syringe with her teeth. With practiced hands, she drew the contents of the bottle into the syringe. With a few presses on the monitor by the bed, the quarantine forcefield shimmered and powered down.

Gently, Shelby rolled up the sleeve of Toni’s t-shirt. She swabbed the skin there with a disinfectant wipe. Even in profile, Martha could see that Shelby’s lips were moving, like she was talking to Toni as she did this.

Whether Toni could hear her or not.

Even after all this time as a scientist, Martha had to look away as Shelby pushed the needle into Toni’s arm.

“What’s happening?” Dot came up behind Martha.

“Shelby just gave Toni something,” Martha said, “an injection.”

Dot nodded. “Okay, back up.” Martha followed the order, walking ten feet back and waiting as Dot put a mask on and opened the door. The smell of antiseptic drifted out of the Med Bay as the doors opened. Dot stepped through and shut them again, just as Martha heard a low moan of pain.

“Toni,” she whispered, “just hold on.”

******

_“Has anyone ever told you you’ve got the most drop-dead gorgeous eyes?”_

_Martha blushes, a bashful smile on her lips. “Really?”_

_“Oh, absolutely,” Shelby says, “Fatin, don’t you think?”_

_The camera zooms in on Martha’s face, centering on her eyes._

_“Oh, shit, yeah,” Fatin says from off-screen. “Damn, Martha.”_

_“You guys are just being nice,” Martha says, waving them off._

_“Not at all,” Shelby says, “I do real, I wouldn’t lie.”_

******

**Sol 32**

Toni woke up to the sound of a steady beeping. Her mouth was dry as she tried to speak, the words sticking to her tongue like flies on paper. Slowly, she turned her head to the side, squinting against the bright lights.

Her stomach flipped as she saw the blonde ponytail at the desk, and the doctor it was attached to. With a grunt, Toni pushed herself up against the aching in her muscles. The metal of the headboard was cold through the thin material of the shirt she was wearing.

Hearing the noise, Shelby turned around. A smile spread slow as her eyes took in the sight of Toni, sitting up and squinting around the room.

“You’re awake,” she said, wheeling her desk chair to Toni’s bedside.

“Barely,” Toni croaked, her voice hardly more than a hoarse whisper. “Any chance for some water?”

Shelby produced a cup from beside her, straw and all. Their fingers brushed as Toni took it from her and drank greedily. It was probably the best water she’d ever had in her entire life, and she drained the cup in ten seconds flat.

“How are you feeling?” Shelby took the cup and went to refill it at the sink.

“Like I’ve been hit by a brick wall,” Toni said. She cleared her throat, looking around the Med Bay. “How long have I been out?”

“About two days, on and off,” the doctor told her. “I’m real glad to see you sitting up and lucid.” She sat back in her chair, handing the refilled cup back to Toni. Toni gave her a close-lipped smile, tight and probably not big enough for the woman who had literally saved her life.

“What did I have?”

Shelby grabbed a holo-tablet and held it up, flicking her fingers and expanding the diagnostics on the screen. “It looks like some sort of infection,” she said, “but I’ve never seen this type of…well, it’s bacterial, so it’s not a flu. It’s not a virus. But it behaves differently than most bacteria. Like, it’s smart. It kind of hid inside a virus-like shell.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Toni asked.

“It’s going to sound crazy,” Shelby said, with a dismissive laugh. When Toni held her gaze, she took a breath and continued. “It looks man-made.”

“Man-made?”

Shelby shook her head and closed the tablet. “I know, I sound crazy. Where would you even pick up something like that?”

Toni thought back on the preparations for this mission, on the endless physical examinations and blood tests, the vaccines and the booster shots. If she really considered it, there would have been ample time for someone to…

But that would be crazy. What reason would there be for the ISA to send an illness out to Mars _on purpose_ and risk the lives of their crew?

“Anyways,” Shelby’s voice cut through her foggy thoughts, bringing Toni back to the present, “you just keep resting, and once you’re feeling a bit stronger, I’ll run a few more tests.”

“Any chance I can just go back to my room?” Toni asked. “I’m feeling a lot better. Obviously.”

Something flashed across Shelby’s face, there and gone again before Toni could make heads or tails of it. “Right. I don’t see why not, as long as you come check in with me every day. And take these.” From the ledge by the bed, Shelby grabbed a small white bottle.

“Acetaminophen?” Toni asked, the corner of her lips twisting up into a wry smile.

Shelby smiled back. “Antibiotics.” She held the bottle out for Toni to take. “Twice day, right after you’ve eaten. Don’t stop halfway through just because you’re feeling better – take them until there’s none left, alright?”

Toni nodded. She took the bottle and carefully shuffled her way to the edge of the bed. With unsteady arms, she pushed herself to her feet, grabbing on to Shelby’s shoulder reflexively as she swayed on the spot.

“Sorry, just,” she squeezed her eyes shut, “headrush.”

“It’s alright,” Shelby assured her, “here, can I at least walk you to your room?”

Toni wanted to protest, but even just the idea of walking to the door alone was daunting. Shelby stood and offered her arm.

“I’m not a senior citizen,” Toni grumbled as she looped her arm through Shelby’s.

The doctor didn’t say anything; she just opened the Med Bay door and held Toni steady as they made the slow walk to the crew’s quarters.

“So,” Toni said as they passed through Central, “did I miss anything while I was out?”

“Well,” Shelby said, “you practically _dyin_ ’ was probably the most interesting thing that happened.” They stepped through the door to the ‘East’ corridor that would take them to the quarters. “Dot had to keep everyone out of Med Bay in case what you had was contagious, so I actually didn’t see much of anyone.”

“Oh.” Toni dug her teeth into the inside of her bottom lip. Something twisted in her gut, uncomfortable and hot – guilt, maybe, at her quick dismissal of Shelby Goodkind before she had even gotten to know her. And now hearing that she had risked her life for her, had stayed quarantined with her…

“Anyways,” Shelby said, opening the door to the Living Quarters, “I’m sure Martha will fill you in better than I could.” She stopped outside Toni’s room.

“How did you know this was my room?” Toni asked, taking her arm out of Shelby’s and leaning up against the wall. Her fingers tapped her access code into the panel, causing the door to slide open.

Shelby shrugged. “Must’ve told me at some point.”

_Unlikely_ , Toni thought.

“Yeah, guess so,” Toni said. The two women stared near each other, neither willing to admit eye contact. “So, listen, thanks. For…saving my life, or whatever.”

“Of course,” Shelby said, “I wouldn’t let you die.” Toni arched her brow, and Shelby seemed to fumble for words. “I mean, I wouldn’t let _anyone_ die. Because I’m a doctor, right? So I…save people.”

Toni nodded slowly. “Right.” Clearing her throat, she stepped into her room and gave Shelby a smile, so small it was barely there. “Well, I’m going to hit the hay.”

“Call me,” Shelby said, “if you need anything. Or if you feel worse. Or better, even, I won’t mind.”

“Sure.” Toni backed up another step, trying to find an opening to shut her door.

“Oh,” Shelby seemed to pick up on her cue and stepped back, “right.”

“I’m just,” Toni pointed at the door, “gonna close that.”

“Sure.” Shelby nodded and tried for a smile. “Get some rest.”

Toni tapped the button and the door slid shut, closing her off from the doctor. With shaky legs, she walked over to the storage locker at the foot of her bed. She grabbed some clean clothes and changed, too tired to attempt a shower, never mind walking to the shared washrooms. Ducking her head, she climbed onto her bunk and pulled the synthetic duvet over herself.

Finally alone, her body seemed to discharge any leftover adrenaline, and Toni felt all the strength she thought she had regained seep from her body.

“Lights off,” she murmured, and before she could check if the command had been followed, she had fallen asleep.

******

_The camera focuses on Dorothy Campbell. She’s in Central, seated at the head of the long conference table._

_“Can you give everyone an update on Toni Shalifoe?” Fatin Jadmani asks from off-camera._

_“Shalifoe came down with some sort of infection a few days ago,” Dot says. “Luckily, thanks to Dr. Shelby Goodkind, she’s making a steady recovery. It’s been about four days since she started feeling better, and she’s been back at work today.”_

_“Any more info on what it was? Like, is it contagious? Is there something wrong with the EVA ground suits? How come I’m fine, if I was out there with her?”_

_Dot sighs and folds her hands together on the table. “We’re still figuring that out. So far, no one else seems to be infected. We’re back to normal operations here at_ Ceres _Base.”_

******

**Sol 36**

“Shelby!” Martha waved at her from her seat in the Mess. “I’ve got a free seat here.”

Shelby smiled and made her way to the offered chair. Martha gave her a warm smile and checked the label on her chosen meal pack.

“Sweet and sour chicken,” Martha appraised, “very nice.”

“As long as it’s not shellfish, I’ll eat it,” Shelby said.

“Are you allergic?”

Shelby nodded and ripped her heated package open, dumping the contents onto the plastic plate. “Had a popcorn shrimp at my cousin’s birthday party once, and my throat shut like a trap.”

“Oh god, I would kill for some popcorn shrimp,” Fatin groaned from the next table. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” and Shelby was pretty sure that was a lie, because Fatin always seemed to be listening in on someone’s conversations, “but _popcorn shrimp_ , like, triggered me.”

Shelby and Martha both laughed. The three of them fell into an amiable silence, eating their pre-packaged meals. The food was generally fine; it wasn’t Michelin Star quality by any stretch of the meaning, but it pretty much tasted like what it said it would.

“How’s Toni doing?” Shelby asked Martha. The engineer had come by for a check-up that morning, but Shelby had felt that Toni wasn’t necessarily being honest about how she was feeling. Especially not with her; even though there had been some kind of unspoken truce since Shelby had literally saved her life, it didn’t mean they were any closer to a semblance of friendship.

“I think she’s doing alright,” Martha said. “I mean, she’s always a little grouchy, so it’s hard to tell if it’s from being sick, or just being herself.”

Shelby stabbed a piece of chicken with her fork and held it in front of her face. “I actually, um, wanted to ask you something,” she said, “about something I heard Toni say. When she was pretty out of it.”

“Oh no,” Martha sighed, “did she call you a cunt?”

Shelby choked on the bite of chicken. She coughed, shaking her head. “No, not that. Lord.”

Martha seemed relieved to hear this. “Good. I swear, it’s not just you she’s like this with. She’s always run a little hotter than most people.”

“I can imagine,” Shelby mumbled, then cleared her throat, “but, no, it was actually someone she mentioned. I think it was Regan? Is that someone important to her?”

Martha stilled and bit her lip. “I don’t know if I should say.”

“Oh,” Shelby nodded, “no, I completely understand.” She understood, but for the past week, all she could think about was Toni and this _Regan_ , whoever that was, and what they were to each other. Maybe it was just hard for her to believe that Toni, so abrasive and sharp around the edges, would have someone she could care about like _that_.

It was unfair, but Shelby couldn’t rationalise why she spent so much time thinking about it otherwise. And she didn’t want to. There were hundreds of other, more important things to focus on. Like her job. And surviving and alien planet.

Small things like that.

“It’s just, like, kind of personal.” Martha shot a look at the door to the Mess, and then at Fatin, who had slipped these big headphones on over her ears, and seemed to be bobbing her head to a beat.

“Of course,” Shelby waved her off, “forget I said anything.”

Martha twisted her lips and leaned in across the table. “Regan is Toni’s ex. They were together for, like, six years? It ended a couple of years ago, maybe even three by now…but Toni never really got over her.” She shrugged and gave Shelby a sad little smile. “Toni’s passionate. She loves a lot, and then it devastates her if it doesn’t work out.”

Shelby nodded, trying to process this information. She had, of course, had an inkling that Toni was gay. It wasn’t anything specific, and it was probably all based on stereotypes, but there were enough things about Toni that tipped her off. The way she sat on any chair or surface, taking up space like she’d never been told it was unladylike – or just didn’t care. The way she wore her clothes, even though they were all the same as everyone else’s.

It all felt a little too familiar.

“I love Toni,” Martha was saying, “but she really doesn’t know how to move on. Or, like, accept change.”

“Seems like a bad quality for someone who has to survive up here,” Shelby mumbled.

Martha shrugged. “She’s great at her job. And she used to be way worse. When she was a teenager, she once pissed _in her hand_ and threw it at someone – oh. Hey, Toni.”

Shelby turned her head and saw Toni standing in the doorway to the Mess. Her jaw was clenched, her knuckles white as she held her hands in tight fists.

“What the fuck are you telling her about me?” Toni bit the words out.

“Nothing,” Martha said, “really. She just asked a question.”

“Was the question, ‘has Toni ever thrown her piss at someone’?”

“Well, no, but -”

“But nothing, Marty,” Toni snapped, “Jesus Christ, it’s no one’s fucking business. If they want to know shit about me, they can ask me themselves.”

Shelby stared at her, thinking that if _this_ was how Toni reacted to personal details being shared, there was no way in Hell that she would ever ask her a single question.

“It’s really no big deal,” Shelby found herself saying, trying to smooth over the tension, “Martha was just answerin’ a question.”

That fiery gaze turned on her, and it hit her like a ten-tonne truck. Toni jutted her chin out and looked her up and down.

“I wasn’t fucking talking to you,” she spat. “And if you’ve got something to say to me, be a goddamn adult and say it to my face.”

“Toni,” Martha’s voice sounded like a warning. Toni’s eyes flew back to her friend, the muscles in her jaw twitching. Shelby felt an unwelcome flash of heat in her chest, something that wasn’t quite fear.

Toni held Martha’s gaze for what felt like an eternity, her body taught, like the slightest pull or prod would cause her to snap.

“Fuck this,” she mumbled. With one final, scathing look at Shelby, Toni turned on her heel and stormed from the Mess.

The air was left electric, and Shelby felt herself deflate. She felt cold, knocked off kilter by the sudden storm that Toni had swept in with her. Martha sighed and dropped her fork.

“I’m sorry, Martha,” Shelby said, a sense of responsibility settling too heavily on her shoulders, “that was my fault, I shouldn’t have put you in that position.”

“Don’t apologise for her,” Martha said. “It’s Toni’s fault that she can’t keep her head. Not yours.”

The words sounded practiced, and Shelby wondered how many times Martha had apologised for her friend back on Earth.

******

_“So, what are we doing here, ladies?”_

_Leah Rilke, Rachel Reid, and Toni Shalifoe all shoot the camera dirty looks._

_“Ladies?” Rachel laughs. “Listen, camera girl, you can call me ‘doctor’ or you can call me nothing.”_

_Leah nods. “Same here.”_

_“I’m not a doctor,” Toni says, “but if you call me a lady again, I’ll punch you in the mouth.”_

_“Yikes,” Fatin says off camera, “my bad.”_

_Leah disappears into the Rover. Toni flips the wrench in her hand._

_“We’re prepping for a sample run,” Rachel explains, “attaching the drill and doing a systems-check before we head out.”_

_“Don’t want to get caught with our pants down,” Toni adds. “Martha also needs a collection of topsoil, so we’re bringing along our EVA ground suits to hop out and fill up this super-scientific bucket.” She reaches down and holds up a plastic bucket. “Got it at Home Depot for five bucks.”_

_Rachel holds up a small spade. “Wal-Mart. Three-fifty, on sale.”_

_Leah pops her head out of the Rover and waves a roll of duct tape at the camera. “Pack of six for ten.”_

******

**Sol 41**

“Did everyone get their data-dumps?” Nora asked from her seat at the conference table.

Everyone nodded or signalled affirmatively. It was the best part of most of their weeks; the data-dumps included messages from family and friends, new directions from the ISA, anything that needed to be relayed to the team. As the computer specialist, and thus the communications specialist, Nora was the one who got to distribute the data-dumps. She had said a few times that it made her feel like Santa Claus, or the crew’s emotional sugar daddy.

“You all saw that we’re being asked to create more content for the ISA broadcasts?” Dot checked. “That means everyone. I know, I know,” she held up her hands to quiet the groans that sounded around the table, “but it’s part of the job. Keep the public engaged, keep the suits happy.”

“If anyone needs help,” Fatin said, “I’m happy to help out. It’s kind of my job. I’ve got a bunch of ideas for good content.”

Everyone sort of grunted at that, some of the crew at least trying to seem thankful for her offer. None of them really wanted to be forced into filming themselves, especially when they’d all rather be working, but orders were orders.

“Message from HQ for us all,” Dot continued, scrolling through her holo-tablet, “is to keep up the good work. Public engagement with the ISA is up, which means donations are up, which means,” and she waved her hand and everyone said the next part along with her, “the suits are happy.”

“Well, now I can finally rest easy,” Toni mumbled. Next to her, Rachel snorted. Dot gave them a look, but didn’t bother reprimanding them. No one really cared about what the suits at HQ wanted; everyone on the team here was focused on their jobs, and nothing more.

“I think that’s it,” Dot said. Everyone started pushing back their chairs as she told them all good work, and to get back to it.

Toni dropped her tablet as she pushed her chair back in, the bagel and coffee taking priority in her grip. “Fuck.”

“Here, let me get that.” Shelby appeared at her side out of nowhere, bending down and grabbing the tablet for her.

“Thanks,” Toni said, sticking the bagel between her teeth and taking the tablet back. Shelby nodded and smiled, still standing in front of her. Her mouth obstructed by the breakfast food, Toni raised her eyebrows.

“I just,” Shelby looked around at the emptying room, waiting until everyone had gone to continue. “I just wanted to apologise. For the other day. You’re right, I really shouldn’t have asked Martha anything, I should have come to you.”

“Mmfrn,” Toni said. When Shelby’s brow tugged together in confusion, Toni put her coffee and tablet down, and took the bagel from her mouth. “It’s fine.”

“Is it?” Shelby asked, clearly not believing what she was hearing, “Because you seemed pretty upset.”

“Look,” Toni sighed, “can we just move on? I don’t care, alright? I don’t think about you enough to care what you are or aren’t saying about me.”

The words were meant to hurt, to cut, but when Toni saw Shelby’s face drop, she wished she could take them back.

Shelby nodded stiffly, her lips a thin line. “Right.”

“I didn’t mean,” Toni cursed internally, wishing she could just untwist the complicated mess that was where Shelby Goodkind seemed to have burrowed inside of her, like a parasite just waiting to burst out of her chest and start eating her alive – it was possible that Toni needed to stop watching old science fiction films before bed – “I just…look, can we start over?”

Those were four words that Toni wasn’t sure she’d ever said before, not like this. She didn’t care what people thought about her, and she certainly didn’t care about clean slates or forgiveness – Toni was much more familiar with grudges, with the weight of dislike on her shoulders like an old companion. The words ‘can we start over’ had never made their way into her vocabulary, because she had never needed them before.

But when Shelby’s lips lifted into a barely-there smile, it all felt worth it.

“Sure,” Shelby said, “I’d like that.”

“Cool.” Toni tucked her tablet under her arm and picked up her coffee. “I’ll see you around.” Her heart was thumping against her ribs under the intensity of Shelby’s eyes, and every cell in her body was telling her to get out of that room before something happened. Anything.

“Yeah,” Shelby said, stepping aside so Toni could brush past her. “Have a good day!”

Toni didn’t look back as she exited down the East hallway.

Her pulse didn’t start to slow until she reached the safety of her room. The vision of Shelby’s eyes, green standing stark against the loose strands of blonde hair that framed her face – it stuck to the back of Toni’s eyelids like glue.

Desperate to distract herself, she opened up the data-dump Nora had transferred to her tablet and put it up on the big screen at her desk. There were a few communications from the Earth team about upgrades and upcoming maintenance – shit she’d had in her calendar since before launch. There was a video message from the Blackburn family, telling her they missed her and were thinking abut her. Seeing their faces made Toni’s chest swell a little, and she rubbed furiously at the sudden wetness in her eyes.

There was a text file from a rehabilitation centre, and Toni groaned. There were only two reasons that she would get a message from them – especially since she had explicitly told them to only contact her if it was an emergency.

Her eyes scanned the requisite greeting, skimming through the message until she found the paragraph that would actually tell her what was going on.

“Fuck,” Toni groaned, “fuck, fuck, _fuck_.” Her mother, almost done her most recent sixty-day program, had relapsed. For all the money Toni paid to get her mom into that program, it hadn’t mattered. The message said they were ‘investigating’ how she had gotten access to the drugs, that she was safe now, and that Toni would have to pony-up if she wanted to keep her mother at the facility.

It had been one of the first things Toni had done when she’d started making actual money with the ISA. Her mom had been on the same rinse-repeat rehab program for most of Toni’s life. Their relationship had been practically non-existent until Toni was eighteen, and her mom no longer had to legally stay away. It was strained at the best of times, but Toni had thought that _this_ could be her good deed. That if she could just help one person, the one person who had never helped her…well. It didn’t matter why.

All that mattered now was if she kept paying.

Toni shut down the screen and leaned back in her chair, running her fingers through her hair. The anger was building inside of her, and she took slow breaths to try and beat it back. Her fingers tightened in her hair and she clenched her jaw, her teeth grinding.

Her anger gripped her before she could tamp it down. With a choked growl, she stood and kicked her chair. It went spinning across the room, slamming against the wall and knocking the framed picture of her and Martha over where it sat on a shelf. Her body felt electric with it and her hands shook as she grabbed the chair and shoved it back towards the desk.

“ _Hey, Toni, you available?_ ” Rachel’s voice crackled through the overhead comms.

Toni curled her fingers into fists and held down the talkback button. “Yeah,” she said through her teeth, “what’s up?”

“ _Could use your hands in the geo lab_ ,” Rachel said, “ _I need to adjust the atmospheric controls but it’s being a bitch._ ”

“On my way.” Toni closed the comm channel and took a deep breath. She pictured all of her anger as a ball, and she put the ball in box. As she opened her door, she left that imaginary box behind her in the loneliness of her room.

******

_“Hi, Earth! I’m Martha Blackburn, and I’m the botanist and microbiologist for the Gaia project. I’m super excited to land and get to work. What I’ll be doing is figuring out what kinds of plants, crops and otherwise, will grow best in the Martian environment. I’ve brought a bunch of different seeds and plants with me, and I’ll have a whole greenhouse to plant them in and see what takes and what doesn’t. Hopefully, by the time we leave, I’ll have a whole catalogue of plants recorded that love Mars as much as we will.”_

******

**Sol 47**

“ _Reminder, there’s a dust storm sweeping towards us,”_ Nora’s voice said over the comms, “ _it’ll be here early on sol 49, so any outside missions have to happen today or it’ll be a long wait_.”

The morning ‘broadcast’ ended there. It had been Fatin’s idea for Nora to start broadcasting the upcoming weather, or any special events that were taking place. Shelby thought it was a bit excessive; Mars weather could change on a dime, or they could all keep track of it on their own very easily – the ISA had installed a weather app on all of their systems.

She stared at herself in her mirror and pulled her hair up into a bun. Her fingers twisted the soft strands with practiced ease. A few smaller strands hung around her face, not quite long enough to fit into the topknot. She rolled the sleeves of her black ISA-issued t-shirt and tucked its hem into the unfashionable ISA-issued cargo-pants. So far, Dot had been the only one to wear the cargo-pants almost daily. Everyone else seemed to be on the same page of ‘laundry day only’. They tapered in at the ankles, but the clunky pockets were never going to be high on the top-ten fashion choices that were available here on Mars.

Her necklace caught the light as she turned away from the mirror. Her fingers brushed over the cross briefly, and then she left her room.

It was early, just after 0700h, and most of the crew was still in bed or slowly waking up. Shelby had always been an early riser – _she who hoots with the owls at night can’t soar with the eagles in the morning, Shelbs –_ and it afforded her some peace and quiet.

Breakfast was the same as always – hot oatmeal with a dusting of brown sugar and a few rehydrated strawberries. The Mess was quiet except for the constant hum of the HAB. It had taken a few days to get used to, initially, but now the hum was a comforting white noise in the solitude of this planet.

As she was clearing her place, the Mess doors opened with a mechanical hiss. Toni stepped through them, bleary eyes scanning the room. When she saw Shelby at the disposal chute, she froze in place.

“Good mornin’,” Shelby said, her voice caught somewhere in her throat.

Toni nodded and shuffled forwards. Shelby stepped aside as she reached for the coffee maker. Her hands shook as she pressed the buttons and stuck a mug under the drip. Expecting nothing more from the other woman, Shelby made her way to the door. There was no reason to stand around and be ignored.

“Sorry,” Toni spoke suddenly. Her voice was hoarse, and Shelby wondered if these were the first words she had spoken today. “I’m a bit of a slow starter.”

“That’s alright,” Shelby turned and curved her lips into a smile.

“Do you want to, um,” Toni gestured vaguely at the table, “sit?”

Her heart kicked into a little sprint. “I would,” she said, “really, but I have so much to do today.”

“Right.” Toni shook her head and grabbed the full mug. “Yeah, of course.”

“But I do appreciate it,” Shelby said. She watched as Toni sat down at the table, one knee pulled up to her chest on the tiny chair. Something pulled in her gut, caught like a hook and yanking towards Toni. “49.”

“What?”

Shelby cleared her throat and lifted her fingers to the dip of her collarbones. They slid against cool metal, turning the cross over and over. “It’s a storm sol, right? Sol 49?” She shrugged and bit the inside of her cheek. “We could have coffee then.”

A bit of coffee splashed over the side of the mug, and Toni hissed at it, putting the mug down. “Fuck,” she muttered. Her eyes darted over to Shelby. “Sol 49 it is.”

“It’s a date,” Shelby said, and as soon as the words left her mouth, she wished she could grab them out of the air and shove them right back in. Toni’s eyebrows lifted straight up, the corners of her lips twisting upwards as Shelby fumbled for words. “Not, like, a _date_ date, obviously. Like a friend date. Co-worker date, even. Actually, we don’t need to use the word date at all, that’s just -”

“Shelby,” Toni cut her off, mirth written across her features, “it’s cool. Sol 49, okay?”

Shelby sighed and prayed that her cheeks didn’t look as flushed as they felt. “Okay.” She backed up to the door and tried for a smile through her layers of embarrassment. “Have a nice day.”

“Uh huh,” Toni said.

Shelby slammed her palm against the door’s button and dashed through it the second it was opened wide enough for her. She walked with steady purpose to the Med Bay, her fingers twitching against the rapid pace of her heart. Only once she was inside did she take a full breath, collapsing with relief into her desk chair.

Wherever this sudden attack of unprofessional nerves had come from, Shelby knew one thing for sure: she had to get them under control before they got her into trouble.

******

_“So, did you always want to be an astronaut?” Fatin Jadmani asks. She’s sitting next to Leah Rilke on a couch in the HAB’s Rec Room._

_“Uh, no, actually,” Leah laughs a little, “I wanted to be a writer.”_

_“No shit?” Fatin whistles, an impressed look crossing her face._

_“Yeah, I really thought I was going to go the whole distance,” Leah said, “I spent most of high school, like, shitting on science and stuff. But then I took this physics class, and it kind of felt like everything clicked into place.” She shrugs, the ghost of a smile on her lips. “One thing led to another, and it turns out I’m pretty good with my hands.”_

_“Do you still write?”_

_Leah shakes her head. “Not unless you count academic papers and ISA reports.” She stares off into the distance. “I don’t think I have any stories left to tell.”_

******

**Sol 49**

The storm arrived as promised. It was ferocious, shaking the walls of the HAB with furious winds. Outside the windows, dust swirled so thick that it was like there was no outside at all, just walls of swirling dirt and rock. With the solar panels likely to be damaged or covered, the HAB was operating at a reserve power level. The lights were kept low, only turning on when someone entered a room. The temperature controls dropped by a handful of degrees. Every crew member had been prepared for it, layering up and tucking emergency flashlights and rations into their pockets.

Finally, everyone had to admit that Dot had had a fair point about cargo pants – the storage was extremely useful.

Shelby was running a stock check when the door slid open. She turned and saw Toni holding her own hand, wrapped in some dark fabric.

“Hey,” Toni said.

“Hi.” Shelby straightened up and nodded to Toni’s hand. “Everything alright?”

Toni shrugged. “I cut myself a bit.”

“Okay,” Shelby squeezed some sanitizer onto her hands and rubs it in, “hop up on the table.”

“I really just need a band-aid,” Toni said as she perched on the edge of the exam table. Shelby rolled her eyes and stepped up to the other woman. She unwrapped the fabric – a t-shirt, by the looks of it – from Toni’s hand and sucked a breath in through her teeth.

“What did you cut yourself on?” Shelby asked. With careful fingers, she used a disinfectant wipe to clear the excess blood. The cut was deep, definitely in need of stitches.

“It’s the stupid low-light,” Toni grumbled, “I was just organising some drawers and I didn’t see the stupid rotary blade.” Shelby gently laid Toni’s hand on the little stand attached to the table. Her own hand felt empty the moment she let go.

The walls rattled, a strong gust of wind shaking the HAB. Shelby administered a local anesthetic, biting back a smile when she noticed the way Toni eyed the needle with trepidation. Neither woman spoke as Shelby worked. The storm raged outside, the lights flickering occasionally.

Shelby was tying off the suture when the lights suddenly cut out.

“What the fuck?” Toni mumbled.

“Hold on, I’ve got a light,” Shelby said. She took off her gloves and grabbed the flashlight from her pocket. She clicked it on, the light briefly blinding Toni before Shelby aimed it below her eyeline. “Sorry.” She offered the end of the flashlight to Toni. “Can you hold this while I’m finishing this up?”

Toni took the flashlight and aimed it at her hand. “I need to get back and check that no other systems are down.”

“Patience,” Shelby mumbled. She cut the extra suture and wrapped a clean bandage around Toni’s palm. The tips of her fingers brushed against the warm skin of Toni’s hands, and she tried desperately to ignore the part of her that screamed against letting go.

“Thanks,” Toni said once Shelby was done. She flexed her fingers in and out a few times, and then slid off the table to her feet. Having not stepped back yet, Shelby found herself right in front of Toni.

Like, so close that if the lights had been on, Shelby thinks she could have counted every eyelash that framed those clear amber eyes.

“Don’t do anything too strenuous with it,” she said, taking a fumbled step back.

Toni smirked. “Sure thing.” She gave the flashlight back and walked to the door. The door didn’t open. Toni cursed and went to the panel, tapping it over and over again.

“What’s wrong?” Shelby shone the flashlight at the panel, keeping her distance and trying to clear her head.

“The door won’t open,” Toni muttered, and Shelby thought she heard a little ‘duh’ at the end. Completely ignoring the advice that Shelby had just given her, Toni grunted in frustration and slammed her palm against it. “Ow! Fuck!”

“So, I’m goin’ to add that to the list of things you shouldn’t do with your hand,” Shelby teased. Toni glared at her over her shoulder, but in the darkness it lacked its usual bite. Before she could snap back, the comms crackled to life.

“ _Everyone, listen up,_ ” Dot’s voice came through, slightly garbled. Shelby and Toni looked at each other, worry reflected on both their brows. “ _Looks like we got a solar knocked loose. I hope you’re all comfortable where you are, because until this storm has let up, we can’t get out there to fix it.”_

“Fucking fuck,” Toni groaned. She sighed and leaned up against the wall. Shelby watched her as she slid down to sit on the floor.

“At least we’re somewhere with a bed,” Shelby said.

Toni looked at her with thinly veiled amusement. “Why would _we_ need a bed?”

“In case we’re here for a while,” Shelby pushed through her embarrassment, thankful for the darkness that was hiding the flush in her cheeks, “we might need to sleep.”

“Hmm,” was all Toni said to that.

Shelby grabbed her desk chair and sat down backwards, leaning forward against the backrest. She folded her arms across the top and rested her chin on them. “How long is the storm supposed to last?”

“Until tomorrow,” Toni said. “And I can’t do shit to re-route any power from here.”

Shelby sighed and wheeled herself to the cabinet. There were emergency rations stored in every room, and she pulled out the stash that was tucked behind a few packages of bandages.

“Well, we won’t starve,” she said, “there’s enough here to last a few days.” She spun the chair around and tossed a bar to Toni. “Here. If you’re hungry.”

Toni curled her lip at the dense package, but she still thanked Shelby. “I guess this is our date, huh?”

Shelby choked on her own spit. “What?”

“Our date,” Toni said, “that you asked me on. It’s sol 49, right?”

“Right,” Shelby said, her brain catching up with Toni’s words. In the relative dark, she peered at Toni. Her lips were lifted in a little smirk as she picked at the wrapper of the ration bar. “You’re making fun of me.”

“Just a little bit,” Toni admitted, her smirk growing into more a smile. Shelby rolled her eyes, a smile of her own twisting her lips. “It’s fun. You straight girls are easy to fluster.”

The word ‘straight’ hung between them. Or, it hung in front of Shelby. It felt like an opportunity, like the universe was holding its hands out and saying, ‘here you go.’ A year ago, or maybe even a few months ago, Shelby would have passed it by. Hell, maybe she would have passed on it if the lights were still on. But here, in the flashlight-lit Med Bay on the surface of Mars, Shelby found herself reaching out and taking it.

“I’m not straight.”

Toni looked up at her, finally making eye-contact. Shelby waited with bated breath for Toni’s response, digging her fingernails into the skin of her arms. A shiver traveled down her spine, from the cooled air or the intensity of Toni’s gaze – she couldn’t tell.

“My bad,” Toni finally said.

“It’s alright,” Shelby answered her, the blood rushing from her scared heart. Something between them felt changed, although Shelby didn’t know what. Maybe it was unfair to ascribe that feeling to Toni, to press this feeling of relief into their unsteady acquaintanceship. Toni stared at her for a second longer, like she was trying to read her. Trying to see under her skin.

“So,” Toni cleared her throat, “you know any good ghost stories?”

Shelby blinked, confused. “What?”

“Ghost stories,” Toni said, pulling her flashlight out from her pocket and lighting it under her chin. She grinned, shadows painted along the rise and fall of her cheekbones. “Like we’re at summer camp, right?” She shrugged as her tongue darted out to wet her lips. “Gotta pass the time somehow, right?”

It felt like an olive branch, and Shelby gripped it like a lifeline.

“You ever heard the story of Betty, the ghost of Odessa High?” Shelby asked.

Toni leaned forward and smiled.

******

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter two!
> 
> thank you all so much for your support on the first chapter! I feel so lucky to have so many people willing to come and enjoy this with me. let me know what you liked, what you laughed at, anything at all - it really helps me motivate to write longer shit, and also you get to have some input on the way this story flows.
> 
> i made a little [moodboard](https://breezered.tumblr.com/post/644291379880673280) for this fic if you want to check it out! Just a fun little visual vibe. 
> 
> stay safe and healthy out there :)


	3. sol 49 - 54

**Sol 49**

“Never have I ever,” Toni twisted her fingers into the fabric of the blanket around her shoulders, “dyed my hair.” She looked Shelby up and down where the other girl was lying on her back, her arm dangling off the edge of the exam table.

“I feel like that’s a cop out,” Shelby said, but she curled a finger down.

Toni shrugged and tugged the blanket closer, wishing she hadn’t left her sweater in the workshop. Of course, she hadn’t anticipated getting stuck in Med Bay. “I’m playing to win, here, Shelby.”

With a groan, Shelby propped herself up on her elbows and fixed Toni with a playful glare. The lights had come back on, although they were hardly at twenty-percent luminescence. It was just bright enough for them to see each other, to read the subtleties of their expressions in the lines of their faces.

Outside the walls, the storm still raged. The roar had become as inobtrusive as the HAB’s humming – just white noise to blanket their ears.

“Never have I ever,” and Toni hated the flip her stomach did at the way Shelby looked her up and down, “thrown my own piss at someone.”

“Oh, damn,” Toni laughed, “you really went there.” She made a big show of holding up her hand and putting her finger down. Shelby smiled, looking like the cat that swallowed the canary. It sent little tingles down Toni’s spine.

It was totally stupid. Finding out Shelby was gay, or whatever, it shouldn’t have mattered. She was still annoying, and blonde, and Texan. But Toni couldn’t seem to stop herself from analysing every little thing now. When Shelby’s perfectly white teeth bit into her bottom lip as she laughed, was that normal? Had she done that before, and had Toni just not noticed how hot it was?

“I’m not gonna go easy on you,” Shelby said. She sat up and crossed her legs in front of her, arching an eyebrow in a challenge.

Toni swallowed, suddenly nervous. “What, is that all you got?” Her voice felt shaky, but she matched Shelby’s challenge.

“Be careful what you wish for.”

“Oh, I’m _so_ scared.” She rolled her eyes and tilted her head back against the wall. “Never have I ever…touched someone’s internal organs.”

Shelby burst out into laughter at that, tucking another finger away into her palm. “That is a disgusting way to phrase it.” She shook her head, trying to hide her amusement.

“It’s a disgusting thing to do,” Toni pointed out. “And, I see you only have one finger left, while I have,” she wiggled her fingers at Shelby and grinned, “three.”

“All you need is one good finger.”

The two women looked at each other, Shelby’s cheeks flushing somewhere on the way to crimson. Toni pressed her lips together, trying to tamp down the bubbling laughter that threatened to escape.

It didn’t matter, because there was no way she _wasn’t_ going to laugh at that.

“Oh my fucking _god_ ,” Toni cackled, clutching her belly as she rolled onto her side. Tears streamed from her eyes as she tried to gasp in breaths. Her laughter shook her whole body. “Jesus _Christ_ , oh my _god_.”

Shelby buried her face in her hands and shook her head. “That is _not_ what I meant.”

“Oh, really?” Toni sucks in a breath and rights herself, silent laughter still rocking through her. “So, what did you mean?”

“I _meant_ ,” Shelby said, like she was explaining the simplest thing in the world to the dumbest person in the world, “that in the context of this game, you only need one finger.”

“Mhm,” Toni hummed, pressing her hand over her mouth.

Shelby rolled her eyes. “Get your head out of the gutter.”

“It’s just that,” Toni said, still trying to swallow her laughter, “usually when a girl is telling me about _how many fingers she needs_ , it’s a slightly different conversation.”

“Oh my Lord,” Shelby muttered, and she turned her eyes skyward. That pretty flush had crept down her neck. Toni felt the laughter die down as her eyes traced the line of Shelby’s neck, stretched back in exasperation. She didn’t know if it was the euphoria of belly-laughter, or the hours of mood-lighting, but she felt warmth spread through her abdomen. For a second, she let herself entertain the idea of running her lips across the exposed skin there, scraping her teeth against the throb of Shelby’s pulse.

It was a dangerous thing to imagine.

“Um,” Toni cleared her throat and tried to recapture the bravado she’d had in her grasp just moments before, “anyways, fingers aside - I’m winning.”

“Not for long,” Shelby said. She still wouldn’t look at Toni, keeping her eyes somewhere above Toni’s head. “Never have I ever…eaten oysters.”

“Is that an innuendo?” Toni asked, finding her confidence in the safety of teasing. Shelby glared at her, and Toni laughed it off. “Okay, okay. I _have_ eaten…oysters.”

“You’re insufferable,” Shelby groaned. She pulled the sleeves of her sweater down over her hands and shivered. Toni pulled the blanket from around her shoulders and held it out.

“Here,” she said, “you’re cold.”

“You’ve only got a t-shirt on,” Shelby said, “I’ll be fine.”

Toni rolled her eyes. “I’m from Minnesota. Believe me, this is not the coldest weather I’ve been in in a t-shirt.” She shook the blanket. “Just take it.”

Her shoes made a soft noise as she got off the exam table. Toni waited for her to take the blanket, but was instead thoroughly surprised when Shelby just sat down right beside her. Their thighs pressed together as Shelby grabbed the blanket and pulled it over both their laps.

“Body heat,” Shelby said, pointedly avoiding Toni’s gaze, “way more effective than just a blanket.”

“Right,” Toni said, her voice caught somewhere behind her ribs. Shelby’s hand brushed over her lap as she adjusted the blanket. Toni briefly considered how hard it would be to just break through one of the outer walls and let the dust consume her so she would never have to confront the heat that ached in her body.

“Your turn,” Shelby said. She smelled like antiseptic and the ISA shampoo, and something floral.

“What?”

Shelby finally looked at her, and Toni immediately wished that she hadn’t. Her eyes were striking this close up, a kaleidoscope of green. A few loose strands of hair hung around her face, and Toni’s hand twitched as she imagined brushing them back.

“Never have you ever…” Shelby led her, a sideways little smirk gracing her features. If Toni didn’t know any better, she might think Shelby was doing this on purpose.

Then again, Toni _didn’t_ know any better. What did she really even know about Shelby?

“Right,” Toni cleared her throat and managed to drag her eyes away from Shelby’s face as she tried to think. “Um. Never have I ever…been to…the Caribbean.”

“Really? That’s it?” Shelby seemed surprised, and she held out her index finger. “Still up.”

“I don’t know,” Toni scrambled to find an excuse for her shitty question other than _you’re literally so pretty and it’s pissing me off_ , “you’re white. Don’t white people love going there for like, spring break or whatever?”

With a shrug, Shelby leaned her head back against the wall. “I spent most of my breaks doing volunteer work, or at pageants.”

“Pageants?” Toni looked over at her, tracing the lines of her profile with her eyes. “It all makes so much sense, now.” She snaps her fingers dramatically as she comes to the realisation.

“What the hell is that supposed mean?” Shelby said. It was clear that she’d gotten her hackles up, and Toni found herself desperately scrambling to defuse the tension.

“Just like,” Toni lifted her hand and sort of waved it vaguely at Shelby, “you know. You’re…hot, or whatever. And positive.” She stared forward, clenching her jaw against the prickling of heat in her cheeks. “Pageant people are always hot and, like…yeah. Whatever.”

She could feel Shelby’s eyes on her. “You think I’m hot?”

“Oh my god,” Toni groaned and leaned her head back, “seriously?” She looked over at her out of the corner of her eyes. “There’s no way I’m the first person to tell you that.”

“Well, no,” Shelby admitted, her hand coming up to tuck some hair behind her ear, “after all, I was Miss Southern Texas four years in a row.”

“Christ,” Toni said, “competition can’t have been too stiff.”

“You know that you _literally_ just said I’m hot, right?”

Toni shrugged and pulled her knees up into her chest. “Allegedly.”

“You know what,” Shelby stood up and tossed the extra blanket onto Toni’s lap, “I’ll prove it to you.” The side of Toni’s thigh where it had been pressed to Shelby’s was suddenly cold.

“Please don’t tell me that you brought your blue ribbons in your personals.” She watched as the doctor hung her head upside down and undid the twist of her hair. Her mouth went suddenly dry as she watched Shelby flip her hair back up, running her fingers through it to try and tame it. “What are you doing?”

Shelby held up her finger, asking Toni to wait. She went over to the tiny mirror by the sink and leaned in. Not a minute later, she turned back around. There was a ridiculous smile on her face, wide and white.

“You look like Astronaut Barbie,” Toni blurted out.

“Shut up,” Shelby rolled her eyes, the façade cracking for a second. She firmed up the smile and tilted her head a little. Her hip popped to the side a little, one arm coming up and resting her hand on the curve she just created. “Hi there, y’all, my name is Shelby Goodkind, and I’m from Fort Travis. I love being outdoors, whether that’s huntin’ big game with my daddy, or helping my mom out in the garden. I believe that God doesn’t do ugly, and I feel truly blessed to be here with all of y’all. Amen, and God bless America.”

Toni snorted, sucking her lips over her teeth to keep from laughing. “Is that what you used to say?”

“Something like that,” Shelby said, still in her pageant persona. Her accent was more pronounced, and her voice was higher in pitch. “I’d probably talk a bit about what I want to be when I grow up, that kind of thing.”

“So, what _did_ you want to be when you grew up?” Toni asked.

Shelby’s smile faltered for a second, but she recovered it quickly. “A doctor, obviously. And I plan on gettin’ there by working harder than anyone else, and learning everything there is to know.” She dropped her hand from her hip when Toni couldn’t contain a short bark of laughter. “What?”

“I’m sorry, but,” Toni shook her head, “did Harvard like the pageant stuff on your application?”

“I think my 4.8 GPA caught their eye first.” It sounded defensive, and Toni felt a little chastised. Clearly, she knew Shelby was smart. No one here was short of the best, but there was still a part of her that had believed that Shelby had managed to coast through life on her looks and privilege alone. Now, as she held Shelby’s eyes, her gaze firm and full of challenge, she felt like maybe she needed to adjust her perspective.

“Damn,” Toni let out a low whistle, “okay, that’s pretty good.”

Shelby shrugged and the pageant mask disappeared from her face. “Just the result of hard work, really.”

“Well, maybe,” Toni said, and at the sharp glare Shelby gave her, she held up her hands. “I was going to say that, _yeah_ , hard work, but also you’re clearly…smart.”

Lips curved into a smile, closed and small, but more beautiful than that phony pageant look by far. “Not to mention hot.”

“Ugh,” Toni wished she could hide under the blanket and still preserve some sense of dignity, “you’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”

Shelby walked over to her and sat down in the spot she had previously vacated. With a friendly elbow to the arm, she shook her head. “Never.”

They listened to the storm outside, Toni tentatively offering half of the blanket back. Shelby tucked it around her legs. She was an inch or two away, and Toni had to tuck her hands into the bend of her knees to resist the sudden urge to scoot closer.

“What did you want to be?” Shelby’s voice cut the silence. Toni turned her head, and took a shallow breath when she came nose to nose with Shelby. There was space between them, but the way Toni’s heart was beating, there might as well have been none.

“Huh?”

“When you were a kid,” Shelby clarified, “what did you want to be when you grew up?” Her voice had gone soft, quiet, and Toni felt drawn in like it was a siren’s song.

Her mouth felt dry, and she darted her tongue out to wet her lips. She might have imagined the way Shelby’s eyes followed the movement, but imaginary or not, it made her chest constrict.

“You know when someone asks you what your favourite movie is,” Toni started, consciously trying to control her breathing, “and you forget every movie you’ve ever seen?”

“Yeah,” Shelby said, and it was a little breathless.

“I can’t think of a single fucking job.”

Shelby leaned a little closer, and Toni felt herself mirror the movement. She could feel the wash of Shelby’s breath on her cheek. “What are you thinking about?”

Toni shook her head slightly, her lips parting as she tried to remember exactly how to form words in English. Her heart felt like it was going to burst from her chest; every breath felt too big and too small. “I don’t know.”

Shelby hummed. “You’ve got gorgeous eyes, you know that?”

“Oh,” Toni blushed, “uh, thanks.” There was a sudden weight on her thigh, and when she dared to dart her eyes down, she saw Shelby’s hand carefully curved over the outline of her leg. “You say that to all the girls?” She tried desperately to play off the tension, the fire that was raging inside of her.

“Honestly,” Shelby bit her bottom lip and looked at Toni through long lashes, “I don’t have much experience in the way of…girls.”

Before Toni could say so much as, “could’ve fooled me,” Shelby had leaned in.

Her lips were soft and careful in their gentle touch. They stole the breath from Toni’s lungs, the hand on her thigh squeezing in a barely-there way. Toni’s eyes fluttered shut as she followed Shelby’s lead. Their lips moved together slowly, exploratory, neither woman pressing too hard or too fast. Her pulse raced, her every nerve thrumming as Shelby’s lips parted slightly against hers.

She felt more than heard Shelby say something, the words lost to the press of their lips. Toni pulled back slightly, her body immediately mourning the loss. “You okay?”

Shelby’s forehead fell against hers, and Toni cracked her eyes open. Green eyes were staring back at her, and they knocked any remaining breath from her chest. Lips were slightly parted, and Toni had to resist the sudden tug behind her ribs that was begging her to shut up and lean back in, to taste those lips again.

“I just,” Shelby’s tongue swept across the rise of her lips, “I need a second.”

“Sure.” Toni went to lean back, but Shelby’s hand tightened on her leg. She froze, and waited. Their breathing fell into a rhythm, and with every passing second, Toni felt closer and closer to the brink of insanity. Being this close, to _this_ woman, who had just kissed her – it felt like the sweetest form of torture imaginable.

After what could have been seconds, or hours, or maybe even days, Shelby spoke. Her voice was hoarse, her breath a gentle breeze on Toni’s lips. “Kiss me again.”

Toni didn’t need to be asked twice.

This time, it was more. It was insistent. Toni turned her body, angling herself towards Shelby. The hand on her thigh moved to cradle her cheek, and she leaned into it. There was a sharp inhale from one of them as someone’s tongue touched someone’s lips – Toni couldn’t figure out who had done what when, but suddenly there’s the warm and heavy slide of Shelby’s tongue into her mouth, and it doesn’t matter who did what when.

Everything turned on a dime. Hands scrabbled against skin and clothes, tugging desperately to try and bring themselves closer together. Teeth scraped against skin, Shelby’s fingers tangled in Toni’s hair as she pulled slightly to angle Toni’s head, their kiss deepening. It was messy and uncoordinated, both women trying to figure the other out.

Toni felt like she was in the grips of something like hysteria. No amount of contact was enough; her body ached to press against Shelby’s, her hands desperate to feel soft skin underneath them. Her mind ran at a thousand miles an hour, and yet she couldn’t make sense of anything other than the open-mouthed kisses Shelby was giving and drawing from her.

Hands gripped her waist and Toni felt herself being pulled. She steadied herself with hands on Shelby’s shoulders, complying with the unspoken invitation to settle her legs on either side of hers, straddling the blonde and finally finding the relief of pressing their bodies together.

“Fuck,” Toni breathed out. Warm lips kissed her chin, her jaw, down the expanse of her neck. “You sure you don’t have much experience?”

Laughter vibrated against her pulse, followed quickly by an increase in pressure. Teeth nipped, soothed by the warm swipe of a tongue. Toni moaned in response, weaving her fingers into that stupidly soft, blonde hair.

“Are you,” Toni bit back a whimper, trying to find some sense of dignity while sitting on Shelby’s lap and falling apart to her lips, “giving me a hickey?”

Shelby pulled back and tilted Toni’s chin up with her hand. “Well,” her lips twisted into a sideways smile, “it wasn’t my intention.” Her fingers danced over the spot, sending little shivers through Toni’s body.

“Fuck you,” Toni said, the words lacking any bite.

“That’s kind of the idea.”

Toni felt that right between her legs, and she dropped her forehead against Shelby’s. “Are you sure?”

With her finger lifting Toni’s chin, Shelby traced the bow of Toni’s lips with her thumb. She leaned in, her thumb nearly caught between their lips as she pressed open kisses to Toni’s lips, her tongue sliding languid against the roof of her mouth.

“Do you have other plans?”

Toni shook her head, too wrapped up in the moment to feel embarrassed for chasing after Shelby’s lips. “No,” she mumbled between kisses, “no plans.”

She felt the curve of a smile against her lips.

******

_“How fast would you die if you were standing on the surface of Mars?” Fatin Jadmani asks from behind the camera._

_Shelby Goodkind looks into the camera with a bemused expression. “What?”_

_“Like, if I went out there and just stood there,” Fatin says, “how long would it take for me to die?”_

_“Are you sure you want to know?” Shelby asks, raising her eyebrow. After a pause, she sighs. “About two minutes, I guess? I mean, it would be the worst two minutes of your life. You would be freezing, unable to breathe, and then just as you think you’re going to die from of those two things, your organs would rupture.”_

_“Sick.”_

******

**Sol 50**

Shelby hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep. Crammed into the tiny Med Bay bed next to her, Toni was snoring lightly, curled around the pillow. Her hair was splayed out around her, a stark contrast to the sterile white of the sheets. She slept surprisingly peacefully – Shelby had just assumed that Toni would sleep how she lived, constantly in motion and spring-loaded.

Turned out, Toni had no problems passing out while squeezed against a wall. Shelby, however, had laid there, stiff as a board while her mind ran marathons.

There were too many consequences to count, if someone found out. First of all, it was likely that neither of them would be allowed to continue working for the ISA. The job that Shelby had strived for her entire life could be taken away from her all because of one momentary lapse in judgement.

Secondly, what would people _say_ if they found out? As far as Shelby knew, no one else had been stupid enough to sleep with another crewmate. Were they going to be labeled troublemakers? Two lesbians who couldn’t keep their fucking hands to themselves? Typical and bad representation for generations of queer women in science?

Thirdly, what was Toni going to do when she woke up? What was _Shelby_ going to do when Toni woke up? Clearly, they needed to talk. But what was there to talk about? It wasn’t like Shelby had _feelings_ for Toni – at least, none beyond a sort of curiosity (which must be filled by now, because there wasn’t an inch of Toni that Shelby hadn’t seen, or touched, or, _God_ , tasted over the last few hours) and a little bit of envy. Of course, it didn’t matter if there were feelings or not, because what they’d done was _so_ not allowed on any level.

No longer able to stand the claustrophobia of the bed, Shelby sat up and swung her legs off the side of the bed. The air was chilly still, and when it hit her skin, she vaguely considered just crawling under the blankets and wrapping herself around Toni, feeling the slide of their skin and the mixing of their body heat.

She shook that idea loose and let it fall away.

The floor was freezing against her bare feet as she gathered up her clothes. There was no point in wearing her underwear, ruined as it was, so she just pulled on her pants and tucked them into her socks. Her fingers fumbled with the clasp of her bra and her head got stuck in the neck of her t-shirt. She splashed water on her face and rinsed her mouth out, spitting into the sink.

Across the room, the digital clock read just past 0300h. Shelby sighed and considered the exam table – it was slightly padded, so it wouldn’t be the worst place to pass out for a couple of hours. Of course, the blankets were all currently tucked around Toni. Shelby didn’t think she had the heart to take them back.

“Hey,” a hoarse whisper called her attention back to the bed. Toni was sitting up, the blankets pooled around her waist. Shelby immediately averted her eyes, almost an instinct at this point in her life. Then she realised that it really didn’t matter if Toni thought she was staring at her tits, because _she was_ and she had done whole lot more than stare.

“Hey,” Shelby said, her own voice raw and muted from disuse.

“What are you doing?” Toni raked some hair back from her face, and Shelby clenched her jaw against the rush of heat in her belly.

“Just gonna get some sleep,” she pointed at the exam table, “you snore.” The joke was for her own sake, because if she said the truth, if she said _I can’t sleep next to you because every time our skin brushes it’s like being set on fire and you make my heart feel like it’s going to explode from my chest and I can’t stop myself from touching you anymore_ …that would be bad.

Wouldn’t it?

Toni scoffed and pulled back the covers. “Don’t be an idiot, you’ll freeze.”

“I’ll be fine, it’s really not that cold.”

“Dude, my nipples could cut glass and I’ve only been out of this blanket for like, two seconds,” Toni said. Shelby blushed and tried very hard not to fact-check the statement. “Toss me my shirt and my pants, and climb into this tiny bed with me before you freeze. They’ll all blame _me_ if it looks like you’ve died from hypothermia.”

Shelby pressed her lips together. It was an unexpected kindness from Toni, both the actual kindness of the offer, and the way she was talking to her as if very little had changed. Even though _everything_ had changed.

Fighting against the constriction of her chest, Shelby gathered up Toni’s clothes and tossed them to her. Her breathing felt too shallow, too rapid, and a thousand feelings that all felt like _doom_ or _the end of all things_ swirled around.

A hand reached out to her, but stopped short. Shelby looked up from where she had been drilling holes in her shoes with her eyes. Toni was watching her with a lightly creased brow.

“Hey,” Toni spoke softly, “are you doing okay?”

Shelby shook her head, forcing a smile. “I’m real good.” Her fingers were twisted in the silver chain of her necklace. She wasn’t sure when she’d started fiddling with it.

“It’s okay if you’re not,” Toni said. “If you’re a little iffy, I get it.” Shelby closed her eyes and shook her head again. It felt like the walls were closing in on her, like there was no room for her here.

“I’m fine,” she managed to squeeze out through her teeth, “honest.”

“Right.” She heard the blankets shuffle around and felt the brush of someone stepping past her. She cracked her eyes open and looked over her shoulder where Toni was standing at the sink, her head positioned under the tap. She took a long drink, water running down her chin when she pulled back.

Shelby tried very hard not to notice the rivulet that trailed down her neck, right over the crude imprint of Shelby’s lips. Toni stepped up to her, still giving her space. It looked like she wanted to say something, her jaw shifting as she looked Shelby over.

“What?” Shelby asked, somewhere between breathless and exasperated, crossing her arms over her chest and looking anywhere but at Toni.

The weight of Toni’s gaze pressed under her skin. “Nothing,” Toni finally said, “just…it’s like, the middle of the night. And, no offence, you look exhausted.”

“Excuse me?” Shelby scoffed. She looked to Toni and felt all of her defences disarm at the sight of the cheeky smile on her lips.

“Good to know you can still look at me.” Toni walked past her and climbed onto the bed. She shuffled back against the wall and pulled half the covers over herself. Her hand patted the space next to her.

Shelby sat on the edge of the bed, perched like a bird ready to take flight at any moment. Her body felt coiled like a spring. “Sorry, I’m just…I can’t, like, relax? Right now?” The words tumbled from her lips quickly, possibly incoherently.

“Okay,” she heard Toni say. Shelby stared ahead at the wall opposite her, the emergency protocol posters glaring at her with their red print. “Here.” She looked over her shoulder and saw Toni sitting against the wall at the foot of the bed. She was pointing at the other end of the bed, where a pillow was propped up against the wall. “We can just sit.”

Her stomach flipped at the surprising show of sensitivity. Not that Toni wasn’t sensitive – in fact, Shelby had found places where Toni was _very_ sensitive – but Shelby had clearly misjudged her. With something that was barely a smile, Shelby scooted over and sat back against the wall.

“Basketball player,” Toni said. When Shelby just stared at her, confused, she rolled her eyes. “That’s what I wanted to be when I grew up.”

“Really?” She shrugged and nodded, the hint of a blush playing across her cheeks. Shelby bit her lip. “But you’re so _small_.”

Toni gasped in mock outrage, flinging her leg out and gently kicking Shelby’s knee. “Size isn’t everything.” Shelby felt her mouth curve slightly upwards. The ropes around her chest seemed to loosen just a bit, and breathing came a little easier. “Okay, now I get to ask you something, right?”

Shelby nodded, her eyes fixed on the way Toni sucked her cheeks in over her teeth as she thought. Her hair was still loose around her shoulders, flat on the side she had been sleeping on. Slightly swollen lips and sleep-puffy eyes, Shelby thought that Toni might be the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

They talked until neither of them could keep their eyes open. Toni had unwound Shelby slowly, carefully. Not once had Shelby even noticed that was what she was doing – it had felt as natural as breathing, letting herself slowly relax as Toni asked her about her hobbies, her favourite movies, music, anything. And she asked questions in return, pleasantly surprised at how often the two of them shared a perspective, or an opinion.

Finally, unable to fend off the press of exhaustion behind her eyes, Shelby had allowed herself to lie down. Toni had stay at the foot of the bed, tucking her pillow under her head and telling Shelby that if she kicked her in the face, she would toss her out the airlock as soon as the doors were working again.

Shelby fell asleep with the ghost of a smile still on her lips.

The sudden awakening came all too quickly.

“ _Good news, crew,”_ Dot’s voice blared over the speakers, “ _we’ve gotten power re-routed to the doors. Unfortunately, we can’t keep it like that and also not die, so I’m instituting an open-door policy for all_ internal _doors. No smartass comments about leaving the airlock open, or I swear to god I will kick your ass, Fatin.”_

Shelby sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. At the end of the bed, Toni was doing the same, a loud yawn escaping her.

“ _Everyone meet in Central in fifteen minutes. Take a minute to freshen up and grab some coffee, because we’re got a shit ton of work to do._ ”

Shelby and Toni stood, both stretching out their backs after being crammed on that small bed for so long.

“Fuck, I feel like a glowstick,” Toni grumbled.

“A glowstick?” Shelby asked.

Toni grinned and lifted her arms above her head. The strip of skin between her shirt and the waistband of her pants pulled Shelby’s gaze. Unbidden, the memory of that skin under her tongue came to mind, and Shelby had to bite the inside of her cheek to cut it back.

“I’m cracking like crazy.”

It was a stupid joke, and Shelby made sure Toni knew that with a roll of her eyes. The door slid open behind her, hissing as it locked in place.

“Looks like we’re free,” Shelby said. It didn’t feel that way, though. It felt like she was about to step from one type of prison to another. Back into the world of yesterday, where she had never known what Toni’s lips tasted like, or what obscene sounds she could draw from her with a calculated curl of her fingers. A world where no one knew that she was gay. A world where the idea of Toni’s mouth mapping her body was just that – an idea, and a dangerous one.

“Shelby,” Toni stopped her before they could step through the door. Her hand brushed against Shelby’s elbow, barely there before it was pulled back. Shelby turned and waited, her heart beating loudly in her ears. “I just, uh…had a nice time, like, talking. Getting to know you.”

“Me too,” she said, “I’m glad we…did that.”

“And look,” Toni cleared her throat, “whatever you want to say, I’ll co-sign.”

It was another one of those surprising kindnesses. Shelby wasn’t sure she deserved it, but Toni offered it up with such ease that she didn’t know what to do other than accept it.

She opened her mouth to reply, but suddenly arms were wrapped around her and a voice was squealing in her ear.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Fatin said, “I thought I’d never see your fine, Texan, God-given ass again.” Shelby laughed in surprise and struggled to reciprocate the hug with the way Fatin was pinning her arms to her sides. As suddenly as she had appeared, Fatin was off of her and glomped onto Toni.

Toni looked very uncomfortable with the turn of events. “Hi, Fatin.”

Fatin pulled back and put a hand on each of their shoulders. “You two are the most beautiful things my eyes have ever seen.”

Shelby and Toni looked at each other, a little bewildered.

“I was stuck in the server room all alone,” Fatin explained. Her eyes darted between the two of them, and her forehead creased a little. “Were you guys together?”

“Uh,” Shelby scrambled for an answer, reminding herself that Fatin definitely didn’t _mean_ it in the way Shelby was interpreting it, “well, Toni cut her hand-”

“Yeah,” Toni chimed in, “then the doors closed.”

Fatin narrowed her eyes, and Shelby held her breath. Could she tell?

 _Oh God,_ Shelby thought, _the fucking hickey._ She tried to catch Toni’s eye, but Toni was holding Fatin’s gaze with a steady nonchalance.

“Surprised you guys didn’t kill each other,” Fatin finally said. “Come on, let’s get going before Commander Dorothy gives us demerits for being late.”

“Well, I think I should go change,” Shelby said, thinking of the underwear that was shoved into the pocket of her cargo pants. Toni nodded furiously beside her.

“I really don’t want to smell like Med Bay for the rest of the day.”

Fatin shrugged. “Fine, be like that. I’m going to go find some more _real_ , _human people_ and stare into their eyes.”

They watched her practically run down the hallway. When she turned the corner into Central, Toni exhaled heavily.

“She’s crazy,” she mumbled.

Shelby nodded. “Just be glad she didn’t notice the hickey.” Toni’s hand slapped against the offending mark and she groaned.

“I’m going to have to wear that stupid turtleneck they forced us to pack,” she said. Shelby pressed her lips together to hide her smile. “Stop laughing. I should have returned the favour.”

Shelby swallowed the _please do_ that bubbled under her tongue.

They started walking down the hall together, and Shelby felt herself slowly start to relax again as Toni groaned about all the repairs that she would have to do on such little sleep. Their hands bumped together as they walked side by side, and Shelby thought that if that was all she could have from now on, it would be okay.

Everything was going to be okay.

******

_“Hour seven of being locked in the server room. I think I’m losing my fucking mind. I thought this place was creepy enough when I could walk around freely, but this is a whole new level.”_

_The speakers overhead crackle and Fatin Jadmani looks up at them. Nora Reid’s voice comes through. “Everything okay, Fatin?”_

_“Totally,” Fatin says, “totally, totally. Um, what are the odds that there’s something in this room with me?”_

_“Almost zero,” Nora says._

_Fatin swallows audibly. “I really wish you hadn’t said ‘almost’.”_

******

**Sol 52**

Everything was _not_ okay.

It had been days of living with reduced lighting, reduced atmospheric controls, and reduced HAB capabilities, and Toni was sick of it. The storm was still raging outside. It wasn’t supposed to be; the weather prediction had said a maximum of two days, and here they were on the fourth.

The dust was ravaging the base. They were down to their reserved solar power, which would only last another five days – maybe seven, if they really stretched it. Toni had been on-call all day and night, fixing everyone’s problems. And _everyone_ had problems. No one was unaffected by the force of the storm outside, or the reduced operational capacities.

Finally, sometime after 2100h, Toni collapsed onto a couch in the Rec Room next to Martha. She sighed and tucked herself up against Martha’s arm, looking down at the tablet in her hands.

“What’s that?” She asked through a yawn. Martha leaned her head down against hers.

“Cell analyses,” she said, “I’m trying to run a few simulations for accelerated growth.” Her fingers danced across the screen, and Toni closed her eyes. Martha smelled like soil and plants, like the only room in the whole HAB that felt even a little bit like being back on earth. “How was your day?”

Toni shrugged and stifled another yawn. “Busy. Wish people would learn to fix their own shit.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No, I don’t.”

As she shut her eyes, two new voices sounded off to her right. Leah and Shelby came into the Rec Room with raised voices, their tones clearly hostile.

“Why the fuck were you even _in_ the garage?” Leah spat. Toni cracked her eyes open and peered at the two women. Leah whirled around on her heel and was glaring at Shelby, arms crossed over her chest.

“I told you,” Shelby snapped, “I needed to find the right torque wrench, and _none_ of them were in the workshop. I figured the next, most obvious place, would be the garage.”

Leah scoffed, shaking her head. “So, what, you thought you could just fuck around and mess with _my_ Rovers?”

“I didn’t touch your fucking Rovers!” Shelby yelled. Toni’s eyebrows shot up in surprise at the sudden outburst. Even Leah seemed a little taken aback. Normally so patient, it was completely shocking to hear Shelby yell like that.

Leah recovered quickly, though, cocking her head to the side. “Then why did _both_ of them have total system-downs?”

“I don’t know!” Shelby said, throwing her hands up. “Maybe _you_ fucked up, Leah! Not everything is some big conspiracy against you! Sometimes things break!”

As Leah stepped forward, closing the gap between her and Shelby with a dangerous curl of her lip, Toni pushed herself to her feet. Martha, who had been trying her best to politely ignore them and respect their privacy, hissed her name to try and stop her.

Toni didn’t listen.

“Guys, woah,” she stepped up to the two women and put her arm between them, “let’s just chill out, okay?”

“I will when she apologises for whatever it is that she’s accusing me of!” Shelby’s words cut through the air with sharp edges. Toni looked at Leah and kind of tilted her head, imploring her to calm down and see reason.

A little part of her couldn’t help but be totally fucking blown away by how _she_ was the calmest person in the room.

“Fine,” Leah finally said, “you know what? I don’t even care.” She pushed past both of them and paused in the doorway, looking over her shoulder. “But she’s not allowed _anywhere_ near the garage from now on.” With that, she stormed down the hall.

“Fuckin’ A,” Toni breathed, “what the hell was that?”

Shelby huffed. “I have no goddamn clue.” She took a deep breath and pressed her lips together, hands clenched into shaking fists at her side.

“Are you good?” Toni asked, keeping her voice low. She wanted to reach out and touch her, to lay a gentle hand on her elbow and let Shelby know that she was there. But she didn’t know how that would go over, if Shelby even wanted her to be standing this close, let alone touching her. So, instead, she let her hands dangle uselessly at her sides.

“Fine,” Shelby answered. There was still an edge to her voice, her words escaping through tight lips and a clenched jaw. “Thank you, for stepping in.”

“Yeah, well,” Toni shrugged, and looked over her shoulder at where Martha was staring at the two of them with a quizzical brow, “would have done the same for anyone.”

That finally brought Shelby’s gaze to hers. The intensity in her eyes was engaging, enticing, and Toni remembered that look from a few nights ago. It was different, but the same, and it sent inappropriate waves of heat through her body.

“Right,” Shelby said. Her eyes darted over Toni’s shoulder, probably looking at Martha, and she squeezed a smile onto her face. “Sorry y’all had to see that.”

“It’s cool,” Toni said, too quickly to pass off as _any_ type of cool, “look at who you’re talking to.”

“Yeah,” Martha piped up, finally, “I spent most of my life de-escalating Toni.”

Toni rolled her eyes, but didn’t dispute it. “You’re in good company, clearly.”

“Right.” With another heavy breath, Shelby took a step back. “My appetite is gone, so I think I’m going to just…go.” Toni nodded, a thousand different responses stuck in her throat.

_Want company?_

_Are you okay?_

_You look stupid hot when you’re angry._

_Should I beat her up for you?_

“Have a good night,” was what she said instead. Shelby gave her a parting nod and a little wave to Martha before disappearing through the door and down the hall.

Toni exhaled heavily and went back to the couch. Her legs felt jittery with nerves, and she could tell that Martha was trying to see what was happening inside of her head. “What?”

“Nothing,” Martha said, looking back at her tablet, “just…that was cool of you. To help Shelby out. I know she’s not exactly your favourite person.”

“She’s alright,” Toni shrugged, “I guess.” Her knee bounced and her gaze kept straying back to the doorway. “Actually, I’m kind of tired, too. I might head to bed.”

Martha nodded and leaned her head against Toni’s as a parting touch. “Sleep tight.”

“You too,” Toni replied.

Her room was the first on the left. With the open-door power-saving policy still in place, everyone had gotten permission from Dot to hang curtains in the doorways or their rooms.

(Well, the spare bedsheets. And Toni had had to install all of them.) 

The hall looked ghostly like that, white bedsheets swaying gently in the breeze of the atmospheric regulators. One door down and on the right was Shelby’s room. Toni hesitated at the entrance to her own room.

Would Shelby even want her there? Was this crossing an unspoken line, going and checking on her?

No, because Toni would do the same for any of her friends. Not that Shelby was her _friend_ , per se, and not that Toni would do it for _any_ of her friends. Just Martha, really.

“Fuck,” Toni whispered to herself. She steeled her nerves and stepped up to the doorway of room 6. “Hey, Shelby?”

There was a brief rustling, and then the curtain pulled back. In nothing but that pink sports bra and her ISA-issued leggings, Shelby appeared in front of her. The dim light of her room created a sort of halo behind her head.

“What is it?” Shelby asked.

Toni found her mouth dry, and she tried to swallow. “Uh, I just wanted to see if you were okay.”

“I’m fine,” Shelby said, a forced smile not reaching her eyes. If anything, it only served to make her look even more pissed off.

“Yeah,” she cleared her throat, “I know, but…well. Whatever.” She tried for a half-smile. “Were you heading to the gym?”

“Yeah I just,” Shelby shrugged and scratched at the back of her neck, “need to work off some steam.”

A dangerous idea took root in Toni’s mind, and before she could think it through, she was asking, “do you want some help with that?”

It would have been comical, how widely Shelby’s eyes opened like a deer in headlights. It would have been comical, except that all Toni could hear was the furious beating of her heart and the rushing of blood as she waited.

“I don’t think,” Shelby spoke quietly, but not softly, and Toni stepped forward until Shelby backed up. The bedsheet fluttered across the doorway behind them.

“Don’t think,” Toni mumbled, “just say yes, or no.” She was barely two inches away from Shelby now. Eyelashes fluttered against cheeks as Shelby took a shaking breath. Hoping her own nerves weren’t showing, Toni curved her hand around the dip of Shelby’s waist. Her skin was as impossibly soft as she remembered, and there was a strong tug in her stomach that told her to touch more, to feel more.

It had been days of avoidant glances, of both women trying to put _this_ behind them. It had barely registered as that, because they were all so busy, but that was exactly what it was - intentional or not. And now, with all of five minutes of spare time to look at Shelby, and think about Shelby, Toni felt herself being sucked back in with no hopes of fighting back.

The decision was made with the slide of Shelby’s lips against hers. Toni melted into her, pulling her closer and trying to push her back. They tripped over each other’s feet, both confident enough to try and fight for control. Teeth knocked together in clumsy kisses.

Shelby pushed Toni down onto the bed, climbing over top of her and rolling her hips down. A groan escaped into the air between them, and Shelby froze.

“Quiet,” she mumbled, leaning down and licking into Toni’s mouth with a forceful eagerness that made Toni’s legs wrap around Shelby’s thighs and pull her closer.

With her fingers tangled in messy blonde hair, Toni pulled back and tried to control her breathing. “Who decided you get to tell _me_ to be quiet?”

“Oh my gosh,” Shelby rolled her eyes. Her fingers made quick work of the drawstring of Toni’s pants. With a biting kiss, she pushed her hand under two layers of fabric and between Toni’s legs. She swallowed the whine of surprise that Toni breathed out.

“Fuck,” Toni hissed. She hadn’t realised how ready she was for this until now. Shelby clearly noticed, too, and it wasn’t long before her fingers curled up and Toni had to bite her lip against the onslaught of curses that came to mind.

“Shut up,” Shelby muttered, but there was no malice in her voice, or the way she watched Toni move beneath her with wonderment.

“Make me.”

******

_“We sent out Toni Shalifoe on sol 53 to check on our solars,” Dot Campbell says to the camera. “There was a break in the storm just long enough for her to reattach one panel.”_

_Fatin Jadmani speaks from behind the camera, “is that going to help?”_

_Dot’s eyes dart to the side, looking at someone off-camera. “Maybe. It won’t hurt, at least. It’s important to keep on top of the repairs and maintenance as much as possible. But, for now, one panel isn’t going to do much good unless this storm clears up.”_

_“Don’t worry, Fatin,” Rachel Reid says, and the camera pans to her, “Nora’s got eyes on the skies. You’ll be back to bitching about the fluorescents and how shitty they make you skin look in no time.”_

******

**Earth – GAIA Mission Day 55: International Space Association HQ**

Gretchen Klein scratched at the side of her neck. The enormous screen at the end of the room was full up with the daily report. Due to the severity of the storm, they were missing a few days of data, but there was a gap from sols 49-54.

“I can’t believe they’ve already got the solars back up,” Gretchen said to no one in particular. It was sometime after 3 in the morning, and the few staff that were there were probably paying her no mind.

Except Thom. Thom, sweet and loyal to a fault. Thom who was waiting for his next instruction like an eager little puppy-dog.

Gretchen wished for Thom to grow a pair.

“Can I get visuals yet?” Gretchen asked.

“I’m on it!” Thom’s voice cut through the still room.

The screen changed to the surveillance centre. There were cameras in each of the shared spaces – Gretchen had advocated for cameras everywhere except the bathroom, but the ISA had shut her down. Even if she was running her side of things, the ISA still had to look out for their astronauts.

Agent Dean Young had made that very fucking clear.

“Why are the cameras still down?” Gretchen walked slowly down the shallow steps. The sound of many fingers typing furiously made a tiny smile tug at the corner of her lips. Though she would be loath to admit it, having this much power felt really, _really_ good.

“Looks like they’ve only got one panel back online,” Thom filled her in, the diagnostics coming up on screen as he spoke, “and there’s still significant dust cover in the atmosphere. I guess they’re still running on reserve power.”

"Do we know if the Rover Virus activated?" She crossed her arms and waited for an answer.

"No," Thom said, "no data on that."

“Are we getting anything from the chips?”

More typing.

“Negative,” a staff member – Susie? Sharon? – chimed in, “we got a blip about two hours ago, but that’s it.”

“Damn it,” Gretchen snapped, “the ISA is going to have our _heads_ if they don’t get their reassurances that everyone is safe and healthy.”

“Isn’t the point that they…aren’t?”

Gretchen rolled her eyes and turned her cold eyes on Thom. “Every situation we have orchestrated is _survivable_. The point is to prove that young women - smart, brilliant women - are the _ideal_ candidates for long, off-planet missions.” She looked him up and down with disdain. “We don’t want to kill them.”

“I’ll get to work on the chips,” he muttered. Gretchen smiled sourly at him, and turned her attention back to the screen.

“Okay,” she said, tugging at her turtleneck, “no one leaves until we get our chips back online, and we receive a communiqué from our confederate. The ISA will have their own people on this across the hall, but I don’t want to hear any shit from Young about how _we_ dropped the ball.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the plot thickens! and so does the tension! 
> 
> an alternative title for this story going forward could be: the one where shelby and toni kiss too much and talk too little
> 
> thank you a million times over for your kind and thoughtful words! it's hard to find the best way to respond when my brain is just doing the kermit-arm-wiggling dance every time i read a comment, but i truly appreciate you all so very much. 
> 
> you're all stars - stay safe!

**Author's Note:**

> i had no clue this was going to come out of me, but it did.
> 
> let me know what you think - i hope you're all here for this exploration with me!
> 
> title from "The Whole of the Moon" by The Waterboys


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